
Book_ ^^ 



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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



DE oyiNCEY'S 
THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH 





AND 



JOAN OF ARC 

Edited 
With Introduction and Notes 

BY 

MILTON HAIGHT TURK, Ph.D. 

Professor of English in Hobart College 




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OCT. 13 ^^05 



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Copyright, 1902, 1905 
By MILTON HAIGHT TURK 



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VCf)t l^ttieneeum 3^vm 

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PRIETORS . BOSTON . U.S.A. 



TO 

CHARLES DEACON CREE 

THIS LITTLE VOLUME 
IS AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED 



Ghncairn^ Kilmacolm, Scotland 
June 2y, igos 



PREFACE 

Some portions of this Introduction have been taken from 
the Athenaeum Press Selections from De Quincey ; many of the 
notes have also been transferred from that volume. A num- 
ber of the new notes I owe to a review of the Selections by 
Dr. Lane Cooper, of Cornell University. I wish also to thank 
for many favors the Committee and officers of the Glasgow 
University Library. 

If a word by way of suggestion to teachers be pertinent, I 
would venture to remark that the object of the teacher of 
literature is, of course, only to fulfill the desire of the author — 
to make clear his facts and to bring home his ideas in all their 
power and beauty. Introductions and notes are only means to 
this end. Teachers, I think, sometimes lose sight of this fact ; 
I know it is fatally easy for students to forget it. That teacher 
will have rendered a great service who has kept his pupils alive 
to the real aim of their studies, — to know the author, not to 
know of him. M H T 



CONTENTS 



INTRODUCTION 

Page 

I. Life vii 

11. Critical Remarks x 

III. Bibliographical Note . . . xiv 



SELECTIONS 

The English Mail-Coach i 

Joan of Arc 64 

NOTES ' 103 



INTRODUCTION 



I. LIFE 



Thomas de Quincey was born in Manchester on the 15 th of 
August, 1785. His father was a man of high character and 
great taste for literature as well as a successful man of business ; 
he died, most unfortunately, when Thomas was quite young. 
Very soon after our author's birth the family removed to The 
Farm, and later to Greenhay, a larger country place near Man- 
chester. In 1796 De Quincey's mother, now for some years 
a widow, removed to Bath and placed him in the grammar 
school there. 

Thomas, the future opium-eater, was a weak and sickly 
child. His first years were spent in sohtude, and when his 
elder brother, William, a real boy, came home, the young 
author followed in humility mingled with terror the diversions 
of that ingenious and pugnacious ** son of eternal racket." 
De Quincey's mother was a woman of strong character and 
emotions, as well as excellent mind, but she was excessively 
formal, and she seems to have inspired more awe than affection 
in her children, to whom she was for all that deeply devoted. 
Her notions of conduct in general and of child rearing in 
particular were very strict. She took Thomas out of Bath 
School, after three years' excellent work there, because he was 
too much praised, and kept him for a year at an inferior 
school at Winkfield in Wiltshire. 

In 1800, at the age of fifteen, De Quincey was ready for 
Oxford ; he had not been praised without reason, for his 
scholarship was far in advance of that of ordinary pupils of his 
years. '' That boy," his master at Bath School had said, " that 



viii INTRODtfCTION 

boy could harangue an Athenian mob better than you or I could 
address an Enghsh one." He was sent to Manchester Grammar 
School, however, in order that after three jears' stay he might 
secure a scholarship at Brasenose College, Oxford. He re- 
mained there — strongly protesting against a situation which 
deprived him " of healthy of society^ of amusement, of liberty, 
of congeniality of pursuits'^ — for nineteen months, and then 
ran away. 

His first plan had been to reach Wordsworth, whose Lyrical 
Ballads (1798) had solaced him in fits of melancholy and 
had awakened in him a deep reverence for the neglected 
poet. His timidity preventing this, he made his way to Ches- 
ter, where his mothisr then lived, in the hope of seeing a 
sister ; was apprehended by the older members of the family ; 
and through the intercession of his uncle. Colonel Penson, 
received the promise of a guinea a week to carry out his later 
project of a solitary tramp through Wales. From July to 
November, 1802, De Quincey then led a wayfarer's life.^ He 
soon lost his guinea, however, by ceasing to keep his family 
informed of his whereabouts, and subsisted for a time with 
great difficulty. Still apparently fearing pursuit, with a little 
borrowed money he broke away entirely from his home by 
exchanging the solitude of Wales for the greater wilderness 
of London. FaiHng there to raise money on his expected 
patrimony, he for some time deliberately clung to a life of 
degradation and starvation rather than return to his lawful 
governors. 

Discovered by chance by his friends, De Quincey was 
brought home and finally allowed (1803) to go to Worcester 
College, Oxford, on a reduced income. Here, we are told, 
" he came to be looked upon as a strange being who associated 

1 For a most interesting account of this period see the Confessions of 
a7t E7iglish Opium-Eater^ Athenseum Press Selections from De Quincey^ 
pp. 1 65-1 71, and notes. 



INTRODUCTION ix 

with no one/* During this time he learned to take opium. 
He left, apparently about 1807, without a degree. In the same 
year he made the acquaintance of Coleridge and Wordsworth; 
Lamb he had sought out in London several years before. 

His acquaintance with Wordsworth led to his settlement in 
1809 at Grasmere, in the beautiful English Lake District; his 
home for ten years was Dove Cottage, which Wordsworth had 
occupied for several years and which is now held in trust as a 
memorial of the poet. De Quincey was married in 18 16, and 
soon after, his patrimony having been exhausted, he took up 
literary work in earnest. 

In 182 1 he went to London to dispose of some translations 
from German authors, but was persuaded first to write and 
publish an account of his opium experiences, which accord- 
ingly appeared in the London Magazine in that year. This 
new sensation eclipsed Lamb's Essays of Elia^ which were 
appearing in the same periodical. The Confessions of an 
English Opium-Eater was forthwith published in book form. 
De Quincey now made literary acquaintances. Tom Hood 
found the shrinking author "at home in a German ocean of 
literature, in a storm, flooding all the floor, the tables, and the 
chairs — billows of books." Richard Woodhouse speaks of the 
" depth and reality of his knowledge. . . . His conversation 
appeared like the elaboration of a mine of results. . . . Tay- 
lor led him into political economy, into the Greek and Latin 
accents, into antiquities, Roman roads, old castles, the origin 
and analogy of languages ; upon all these he was informed to 
considerable minuteness. The same with regard to Shake- 
speare's sonnets, Spenser's minor poems, and the great writers 
and characters of Elizabeth's age and those of Cn^mwell's 
time." 

From this time on De Quincey maintained himself by con- 
tributing to various magazines. He soon exchanged London 
and the Lakes for Edinburgh and its suburb, Lasswade, where 



X INTRODUCTION 

the remainder of his Hfe was spent. Blackwood's Edinburgh 
Magazine and its rival Taifs Magazine received a large num- 
ber of contributions. The English Mail- Coach appeared in 
1849 in Blackwood, Joan of Arc had already been published 
(1847) in Tail, De Quincey continued to drink laudanum 
throughout his life, — twice after 182 1 in very great excess. 
During his last years he nearly completed a collected edition 
of his works. He died in Edinburgh on the 8th of December, 
1859. 

II. CRITICAL REMARKS 

The Opium-Eater had been a weak, lonely, and over- 
studious child, and -he was a solitary and ill-developed man. 
His character and his work present strange contradictions. 
He is most precise in statement, yet often very careless of 
fact ; he is most courteous in manner, yet inexcusably incon- 
siderate in his behavior. Again, he sets up a high standard of 
purity of diction, yet uses slang quite unnecessarily and inap- 
propriately ; and though a great master of style, he is guilty, 
at times, of digression within digression until all trace of the 
original subject is lost. 

De Quincey divides his writings into three groups : first, 
that class which ** proposes primarily to amuse the reader, but 
which, in doing so, may or may not happen occasionally to 
reach a higher station, at which the amusement passes into 
an impassioned interest." To this class would belong the 
Autobiographic Sketches and the Literary Reminiscences, As 
a second class he groups ** those papers which address them- 
selves purely to the understanding as an insulated faculty, or 
do so primarily." These essays would include, according to 
Professor Masson's subdivision, (^) Biographies, such as Shake- 
speare or Pope — Joan of Arc falls here, yet has some claim 
to a place in the first class ; (J?) Historical essays, like The 
Ccesars; (c) Speculative and Theological essays ; {d) Essays in 



INTRODUCTION xi 

Political Economy and Politics ; (e) Papers of Literary Theory 
and Criticism, such as the brilliant discussions of Rhetoric, 
Style, and Conversation, and the famous On the Knocking at 
the Gate in ^Macbeth' As a third and ^^ far higher " class the 
author ranks the Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, and 
also (but more emphatically) the Suspiria de Profundis, **0n 
these," he says, " as modes of impassioned prose ranging un- 
der no precedents that I am aware of in literature, it is much 
more difficult to speak justly, whether in a hostile or a friendly 
character." 

Of De Quincey's essays in general it may be said that they 
bear witness alike to the diversity of his knowledge and the 
penetrative power of his intellect. The wide range of his sub- 
jects, however, deprives his papers when taken together of the 
weight which might attach to a series of related discussions. 
And, remarkable as is De Quincey's aptitude for analysis and 
speculation, more than once we have to regret the lack of 
the " saving common-sense " possessed by many far less gifted 
men. His erudition and insight are always a little in advance 
of his good judgment. 

As to the works of the first class, the Reminiscences are 
defaced by the shrewish spirit shown in the accounts of 
Wordsworth and other friends ; nor can we depend upon them 
as records of fact. But our author had had exceptional oppor- 
tunities to observe these famous men and women, and he pos- 
sessed no little insight into literature and personaHty. As to 
the Autobiographic Sketches, the handhng of events is hope- 
lessly arbitrary and fragmentary. In truth, De Quincey is draw- 
ing an idealized picture of childhood, — creating a type rather 
than re-creating a person ; it is a study of a child of talent that 
we receive from him, and as such these sketches form one of 
the most satisfactory products of his pen. 

The Confessions as a narrative is related to the Autobiogra- 
phy, while its poetical passages range it with the Suspiria and 



Xli INTRODUCTION 

the Mail- Coach, De Quincey seems to have believed that he 
was creating in such writings a new Hterary type of prose 
poetry or prose phantasy ; he had, with his splendid dreams 
as subject-matter, lifted prose to heights hitherto scaled only 
by the poet. In reality his style owed much to the seven- 
teenth-century writers, such as Milton and Sir Thomas Browne. 
He took part with Coleridge, Lamb, and others in the general 
revival of interest in earlier modern English prose, which is 
a feature of the Romantic Movement. Still none of his con- 
temporaries wrote as he did ; evidently De Quincey has a dis- 
tinct quality of his own. Ruskin, in our own day, is like him, 
but never the same. 

Yet De Quincey' s prose poetry is a very small portion of 
his work, and it is not in this way only that he excels. Mr. 
Saintsbury has spoken of the strong appeal that De Quincey 
makes to boys.^ It is not without significance that he men- 
tions as especially attractive to the young only writings with a 
large narrative element.^ Few boys read poetry, whether in 
verse or prose, and fewer still criticism or philosophy ; to 
every normal boy the gate of good Hterature is the good story. 
It is the narrative skill of De Quincey that has secured for 
him, in preference to other writers of his class, the favor of 
youthful readers. 

It would be too much to say that the talent that attracts the 
young to him must needs be the Opium-Eater's grand talent, 
though the notion is defensible, seeing that only saHent quali- 
ties in good writing appeal to inexperienced readers. I believe, 

1 " Probably more boys have in the last forty years been brought to 
a love of literature proper by De Quincey than by any other writer 
whatever." — History of Nuiete e nth- Century Literature^ p. 198. 

2 " To read the Essay on Murder^ the Eitglish Mail-Coach, The 
Spanish Nun, The Ccesars, and half a score other things at, the age of 
about fifteen or sixteen is, or ought to be, to fall in love v^rith them." — 
Essays in English Literature, 1^80-1860, p. 307. 



INTRODUCTION xiii 

however, that this skill in narration is De Quincey's most 
persistent quality, — the golden thread that unites all his most 
distinguished and most enduring work. And it is with him a 
part of his genius for style. Creative power of the kind that 
goes to the making of plots De Quincey had not; he has 
proved that forever by the mediocrity of Klosterheim. Give 
him Bergmann's account of the Tartar Migration, or the story 
of the Fighting Nun, — give him the matter, — and a brilliant 
narrative will result. Indeed, De Quincey loved a story for its 
own sake; he rejoiced to see it e,xtend its winding course 
before him ; he delighted to follow it, touch it, color it, see it 
grow into body and being under his hand. That this enthusi- 
asm should now^ and then tend to endanger the integrity of the 
facts need not surprise us ; as I have said elsewhere, accuracy 
in these matters is hardly to be expected of De Quincey. And 
we can take our pleasure in the skillful unfolding of the dra- 
matic narrative of the Tartar Flight — we can feel the author's 
joy in the scenic possibilities of his theme — even if we know 
that here and there an incident appears that is quite in its 
proper place — but is unknown to history. 

In his Confessions the same constructive power bears its 
part in the author's triumph. A peculiar end was to be 
reached in that narrative, — an end in which the writer had 
a deep personal interest. What is an opium-eater? Says a 
character in a recent work of fiction, of a social wreck : ^^If 
it is n't whisky with him, it's opium; if it isn't opium, it's 
whisky." This speech estabHshes the popular category in 
which De Quincey's habit had placed him. Our attention was 
to be drawn from these degrading connections. And this is 
done not merely by the correction of some widespread falla- 
cies as to the effects of the drug ; far more it is the result of 
narrative skill. As we follow with ever-increasing sympathy 
the lonely and sensitive child, the wandering youth, the neu- 
ralgic patient, into the terrible grasp of opium, who realizes. 



xiv INTRODUCTION 

amid the gorgeous delights and the awful horrors of the tale, 
that the writer is after all the victim of the worst of bad habits ? 
We can hardly praise too highly the art which even as we look 
beneath it throws its glamour over us still. 

Nor is it only in this constructive power, in the selection 
and arrangement of details, that De Quincey excels as a nar- 
rator; a score of minor excellences of his style, such as the 
fine Latin words or the sweeping periodic sentences, contribute 
to the effective progress of his narrative prose. Mr. Lowell 
has said that *lthere are no such vistas and avenues of verse 
as Milton's." The comparison is somewhat hazardous, still I 
should like to venture the parallel claim that there are no such 
streams of prose as De Quincey's. The movement of his dis- 
course is that of the broad river, not in its weight or force 
perhaps, but in its easy flowing progress, in its serene, unhurried 
certainty of its end. To be sure, only too often the waters 
overflow their banks and run far afield in alien channels. Yet, 
when great power over the instrument of language is joined to 
so much constructive skill, the result is narrative art of high 
quahty, — an achievement that must be in no small measure 
the solid basis of De Quincey's fame. 

IIL BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 
I. Works 

1. The Collected Writings of Thomas de Quincey. New and 

enlarged edition by David Masson. Edinburgh : A. and C. 
Black, 1 889-1 890. [New York: The Macmillan Co. 14 
vols., with footnotes, a preface to each volume, and index. 
Reissued in cheaper form. The standard edition.] 

2. The Works of Thomas de Quincey. Riverside Edition. 

Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1877. [12 vols., with 
notes and index.] 



INTRODUCTION XV 

3. Selections from De Quincey. Edited with an Introduction and 

Notes, by M. H. Turk. Athenaeum Press Series. Boston, 
U.S.A., and London: Ginn and Company, 1902. [''The 
largest body of selections from De Quincey recently pub- 
lished. . . . The selections are The Affliction of Child- 
hood^ Introduction to the World of Strife^ A Meeting 
with Lamb^ A Meeting with Coleridge^ Recollections of 
Wordsworth^ Confessions^ A Portion of Suspiria, The 
English Mail-Coach^ Murder as one of the Fine Arts^ 
Second Paper^ foan of Arc, and On the Knocking at the 
Gate in ' Macbeth.' "] 

II. Biography and Criticism 

4. D. Masson. Thojnas De Quittcey, English Men of Letters. 

London. [New York : Harper. An excellent brief biog- 
raphy. This book, with a good volume of selections, should 
go far toward supplying the ordinary student's needs.] 

5. H. S. Salt. De Quincey. Bell's Miniature Series of Great 

Writers. London: George Bell and Sons. [A good short life.] 

6. A. H. Japp. Thomas De Quincey : His Life and Writings, 

London, 1890. [New York : Scribner. First edition by 
"H. A. Page," 1877. The standard life of De Quincey; 
it contains valuable communications from De Quincey's 
daughters, J. Hogg, Rev. F. Jacox, Professor Masson, and 
others.] 

7. A. H. Japp. De Quincey Memorials, Being Letters and Other 

Records,, here first published. With Communicatio7ts from 
Coleridge, the Wordsworths, Hannah More, Professor 
Wilson, and others. 2 vols. London : W. Heinemann, 1 891. 

8. J. Hogg.. De Quincey and his Friends, Personal Recollec- 

tions, Souvenirs, and Anecdotes [including Woodhouse's 
Conversations, Findlay's Personal Recollections, Hodgson's 
On the Genius of De Quincey, and a mass of personal 
notes from a host of friends]. London : Sampson Low, 
Marston & Co., 1895. 



xvi INTRODUCTION 

9. E. T. Mason. Personal Traits of British Authors. New 
York, 1885. [4 vols. The volume subtitled Scott^ ^ogg^ 
etc., contains some accounts of De Quincey not included 
by Japp or Hogg.] 

10. L. Stephen. Hours in a Library. Vol. I. New York, 1892. 

11. W. MiNTO. Manual of English Prose Literature. Boston, 

1889. [Contains the best general discussion of De Quin- 
cey's style.] 

12. L. Cooper. The Prose Poetry of Thomas De Quincey. 

Leipzig, 1902. 



THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH 

Section I — The Glory of Motion 

Some twenty or more years before I matriculated at 
Oxford, Mr. Palmer, at that time M.P. for Bath, had 
accomplished two things, very hard to do on our little 
planet, the Earth, however cheap they may be held by 
eccentric people in comets : he had invented mail-coaches, 5 
and he had married the daughter of a duke. He was, 
therefore, just twice as great a man as Galileo, who did 
certainly invent (or, which is the same thing,^ discover) 
the satellites of Jupiter, those very next things extant to 
mail-coaches in the two capital pretensions of speed and 10 
keeping time, but, on the other hand, who did not marry 
the daughter of a duke. 

These mail-coaches, as organised by Mr. Palmer, are 
entitled to a circumstantial notice from myself, having had 
so large a share in developing the anarchies of my subse- 15 
quent dreams: an agency which they accomplished, ist, 
through velocity at that time unprecedented — for they first 
revealed the glory of motion ; 2dly, through grand effects 
for the eye between lamplight and the darkness upon soli- 
tary roads ; 3dly, through animal beauty and power so often 20 
displayed in the class of horses selected for this mail service ; 

1 ** The same thing " ; — Thus, in the calendar of the Church Festi- 
vals, the discovery of the true cross (by Helen, the mother of 
Constantine) is recorded (and, one might think, with the express 
consciousness of sarcasm) as the Invention of the Cross. 

I 



2 SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCE Y 

4thly, through the conscious presence of a central intellect, 
that, in the midst of vast distances ^ — of storms, of darkness, 
of danger — overruled all obstacles into one steady co-opera- 
tion to a national result. For my own feeling, this post-office 
5 service spoke as by some mighty orchestra, where a thousand 
instruments, all disregarding each other, and so far in dan- 
ger of discord, yet all obedient as slaves to the supreme baton 
of some great leader, terminate in a perfection of harmony 
like that of heart, brain, and lungs in a healthy animal organ- 
ic isation. But, finally, that particular element in this whole 
combination which most impressed myself, and through 
which it is that to this hour Mr. Palmer's mail-coach system 
tyrannises over my dreams by terror and terrific beauty, lay 
in the 2,^i\A political mission which at that time it fulfilled. 
15 The mail-coach it was that distributed over the face of the 
land, like the opening of apocalyptic vials, the heart-shaking 
news of Trafalgar, of Salamanca, of Vittoria, of Waterloo. 
These were the harvests that, in the grandeur of their 
reaping, redeemed the tears and blood in which they 
20 had been sown. Neither was the meanest peasant so much 
below the grandeur and the sorrow of the times as to con- 
found battles such as these, which were gradually moulding 
the destinies of Christendom, with the vulgar conflicts of 
ordinary warfare, so often no more than gladiatorial trials 
25 of national prowess. The victories of England in this 
stupendous contest rose of themselves as natural Te Deums 
to heaven; and it was felt by the thoughtful that such 
victories, at such a crisis of general prostration, were not 
more beneficial to ourselves than finally to France, our 
30 enemy, and to the nations of all western or central Europe, 

1 " Vast distances " ; — One case was familiar to mail-coach travellers 
where two mails in opposite directions, north and south, starting at 
the same minute from points six hundred miles apart, met almost con- 
stantly at a particular bridge which bisected the total distance. 



THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH 3 

through whose pusillanimity it was that the French domina- 
tion had prospered. 

The mail-coach, as the national organ for publishing 
these mighty events, thus diffusively influential, became 
itself a spiritualised and glorified object to an impassioned 5 
heart ; and naturally, in the Oxford of that day, all hearts 
were impassioned, as being all (or nearly all) in early man- 
hood. In most universities there is one single college ; in 
Oxford there were five-and-twenty, all of which were peopled 
by young men, the elite of their own generation ; not boys, 10 
but men : none under eighteen. In some of these many 
colleges the custom permitted the student to keep what are 
called " short terms " ; that is, the four terms of Michael- 
mas, Lent, Easter, and Act, were kept by a residence, in 
the aggregate, of ninety-one days, or thirteen weeks. Under 15 
this interrupted residence, it was possible that a student 
might have a reason for going down to his home four 
times in the year. This made eight journeys to and fro. 
But, as these homes lay dispersed through all the shires of 
the island, and most of us disdained all coaches except his 20 
Majesty's mail, no city out of London could pretend to so 
extensive a connexion with Mr. Palmer's establishment as 
Oxford. Three mails, at the least, I remember as passing 
every day through Oxford, and benefiting by my personal 
patronage — viz., the Worcester, the Gloucester, and the 25 
Holyhead mail. Naturally, therefore, it became a point of 
some interest with us, whose journeys revolved every six 
weeks on an average, to look a little into the executive 
details of the system. With some of these Mr. Palmer had 
no concern ; they rested upon bye-laws enacted by posting- 30 
houses for their own benefit, and upon other bye-laws, 
equally stern, enacted by the inside passengers for the 
illustration of their own haughty exclusiveness. These last 
were of a nature to rouse our scorn ; from which the 



4 SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCE Y 

transition was not very long to systematic mutiny. Up to 
this time, say 1804, or 1805 (the year of Trafalgar), it had 
been the fixed assumption of the four inside people (as an 
old tradition of all public carriages derived from the reign of 
5 Charles II) that they, the illustrious quaternion, constituted 
a porcelain variety of the human race, whose dignity would 
have been compromised by exchanging one word of civility 
with the three miserable delf-ware outsides. Even to have 
kicked an outsider might have been held to attaint the foot 

10 concerned in that operation, so that, perhaps, it would have 
required an act of Parliament to restore its purity of blood. 
What words, then, could express the horror, and the sense 
of treason, in that case, which ^<^^ happened, where all three 
outsides (the trinity of Pariahs) made a vain attempt to sit 

15 down at the same breakfast-table or dinner-table with the 
consecrated four ? I myself witnessed such an attempt ; and 
on that occasion a benevolent old gentleman endeavoured 
to soothe his three holy associates, by suggesting that, if 
the outsides were indicted for this criminal attempt at the 

20 next assizes, the court would regard it as a case of lunacy 
or delirium tremens rather than of treason. England owes 
much of her grandeur to the depth of the aristocratic 
element in her social composition, when pulling against 
her strong democracy. I am not the man to laugh at it. 

25 But sometimes, undoubtedly, it expressed itself in comic 
shapes. The course taken with the infatuated outsiders, 
in the particular attempt which I have noticed, was that 
the waiter, beckoning them away from the privileged salle- 
d-manger, sang out, *^This way, my good men," and then 

30 enticed these good men away to the kitchen. But that plan 
had not always answered. Sometimes, though rarely, cases 
occurred where the intruders, being stronger than usual, or 
more vicious than usual, resolutely refused to budge, and so 
far carried their point as to have a separate table arranged 



THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH S 

for themselves in a corner of the general room. Yet, if an 
Indian screen could be found ample enough to plant them 
out from the very eyes of the high table, or dais^ it then 
became possible to assume as a fiction of law that the three 
delf fellows, after all, were not present. They could be 5 
ignored by the porcelain men, under the maxim that objects 
not appearing and objects not existing are governed by the 
same logical construction.^ 

Such being, at that time, the usage of mail-coaches, what 
was to be done by us of young Oxford ? We, the most 10 
aristocratic of people, who were addicted to the practice of 
looking down superciliously even upon the insides them- 
selves as often very questionable characters — were we, by 
voluntarily going outside, to court indignities ? If our dress 
and bearing sheltered us generally from the suspicion of 15 
being " raff '' (the name at that period for "snobs " ^), we 
really were such constructively by the place we assumed. 
If we did not submit to the deep shadow of eclipse, we 
entered at least the skirts of its penumbra. And the 
analogy of theatres was valid against us, — where no man 20 
can complain of the annoyances incident to the pit or 
gallery, having his instant remedy in paying the higher 
price of the boxes. But the soundness of this analogy we 
disputed. In the case of the theatre, it cannot be pre- 
tended that the inferior situations have any separate 25 
attractions, unless the pit may be supposed to have an 
advantage for the purposes of the critic or the dramatic 
reporter. But the critic or reporter is a rarity. For most 

1 De non apparentibus^ etc. 

2 " SnobSf''^ and its antithesis, " nobs^'' arose among the internal fac- 
tions of shoemakers perhaps ten years later. Possibly enough, the 
terms may have existed much earlier ; but they were then first made 
known, picturesquely and effectively, by a trial at some assizes which 
happened to fix the public attention. 



6 SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCE Y 

people, the sole benefit is in the price. Now, on the con- 
trary, the outside of the mail had its own incommunicable 
advantages. These we could not forego. The higher 
price we would willingly have paid, but not the price 

5 connected with the condition of riding inside ; which con- 
dition we pronounced insufferable. The air, the freedom 
of prospect, the proximity to the horses, the elevation of 
seat : these were what we required ; but, above all, the 
certain anticipation of purchasing occasional opportunities 

10 of driving. 

Such was the difficulty which pressed us ; and under the 
coercion of this difficulty we instituted a searching inquiry 
into the true quality and valuation of the different apart- 
ments about the mail. We conducted this inquiry on meta- 

15 physical principles; and it was ascertained satisfactorily 
that the roof of the coach, which by some weak men had 
been called the attics, and by some the garrets, was in 
reality the drawing-room ; in which drawing-room the box 
was the chief ottoman or sofa ; whilst it appeared that the 

20 inside, which had been traditionally regarded as the only 
room tenantable by gentlemen, was, in fact, the coal-cellar 
in disguise. 

Great wits jump. The very same idea had not long 
before struck the celestial intellect of China. Amongst the 

25 presents carried out by our first embassy to that country 
was a state-coach. It had been specially selected as a 
personal gift by George III ; but the exact mode of using 
it was an intense mystery to Pekin. The ambassador, 
indeed (Lord Macartney), had made some imperfect expla- 

30 nations upon this point ; but, as His Excellency communi- 
cated these in a diplomatic whisper at the very moment 
of his departure, the celestial intellect was very feebly illu- 
minated, and it became necessary to call a cabinet council 
on the grand state question, "Where was the Emperor to 



THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH 7 

sit?" The hammer-cloth happened to be unusually gorgeous; 
and, partly on that consideration, but partly also because 
the box offered the most elevated seat, was nearest to the 
moon, and undeniably went foremost, it was resolved by 
acclamation that the box was the imperial throne, and, 5 
for the scoundrel who drove, — he might sit where he could 
find a perch. The horses, therefore, being harnessed, 
solemnly his imperial majesty ascended his new English 
throne under a flourish of trumpets, having the first lord of 
the treasury on his right hand, and the chief jester on his 10 
left. Pekin gloried in the spectacle ; and in the whole 
flowery people, constructively present by representation, 
there was but one discontented person, and that was the 
coachman. This mutinous individual audaciously shouted, 
"Where am /to sit i* " But the privy council, incensed 15 
by his disloyalty, unanimously opened the door, and kicked 
him into the inside. He had all the inside places to him- 
self ; but such is the rapacity of ambition that he was still 
dissatisfied. " I say," he cried out in an extempore petition 
addressed to the Emperor through the window — "I say, 20 
how am I to catch hold of the reins?" — "Anyhow," was 
the imperial answer ; ** don't trouble me^ man, in my glory. 
How catch the reins ? Why, through the windows, through 
the keyholes — ^^r^how." Finally this contumacious coach- 
man lengthened the check-strings into a sort of jury-reins 25 
communicating with the horses ; with these he drove as 
steadily as Pekin had any right to expect. The Emperor 
returned after the briefest of circuits ; he descended in 
great pomp from his throne, with the severest resolution 
never to remount it. A public thanksgiving was ordered 30 
for his majesty's happy escape from the disease of a broken 
neck ; and the state-coach was dedicated thenceforward 
as a votive offering to the god Fo Fo — whom the learned 
more accurately called Fi Fi. 



8 SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCE Y 

A revolution of this same Chinese character did young 
Oxford of that era effect in the constitution of mail-coach 
society. It was a perfect French Revolution ; and we had 
good reason to say, fa ira. In fact, it soon became too 
5 popular. The "public" — a well-known character, particu- 
larly disagreeable, though slightly respectable, and noto- 
rious for affecting the chief seats in synagogues — had at 
first loudly opposed this revolution ; but, when the oppo- 
sition showed itself to be ineffectual, our disagreeable 

lo friend went into it with headlong zeal. At first it was a 
sort of race between us ; and, as the public is usually from 
thirty to fifty years old, naturally we of young Oxford, that 
averaged about twenty, had the advantage. Then the 
public took to bribing, giving fees to horse-keepers, &c., 

15 who hired out their persons as warming-pans on the box 
seat. That, you know, was shocking to all moral sensibili- 
ties. Come to bribery, said we, and there is an end to 
all morality, — Aristotle's, Zeno's, Cicero's, or anybody's. 
And, besides, of what use was it ? For we bribed also. 

20 And, as our bribes, to those of the public, were as five 
shillings to sixpence, here again young Oxford had the 
advantage. But the contest was ruinous to the principles 
of the stables connected with the mails. This whole cor- 
poration was constantly bribed, rebribed, and often sur- 

25 rebribed ; a mail-coach yard was like the hustings in a 
contested election ; and a horse-keeper, ostler, or helper, 
was held by the philosophical at that time to be .the most 
corrupt character in the nation. 

There was an impression upon the public mind, natural 

30 enough from the continually augmenting velocity of the 
mail, but quite erroneous, that an outside seat on this class 
of carriages was a post of danger. On the contrary, I 
maintained that, if a man had become nervous from some 
gipsy prediction in his childhood, allocating to a particular 



THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH 9 

moon now approaching some unknown danger, and he 
should inquire earnestly, "Whither can I fly for shelter? 
Is a prison the safest retreat ? or a lunatic hospital ? or the 
British Museum?" I should have replied, **0h no; I'll 
tell you what to do. Take lodgings for the next forty days 5 
on the box of his Majesty's mail. Nobody can touch you 
there. If it is by bills at ninety days after date that you 
are made unhappy — if noters and protesters are the sort 
of wretches whose astrological shadows darken the house 
of life — then note you what I vehemently protest : viz., 10 
that, no matter though the sheriff and under-sheriff in every 
county should be running after you with his posse, touch a 
hair of your head he cannot whilst you keep house and 
have your legal domicile on the box of the mail. It is 
felony to stop the mail; even the sheriff cannot do that. 15 
And an extra touch of the whip to the leaders (no great 
matter if it grazes the sheriff) at any time guarantees your 
safety." In fact, a bedroom in a quiet house seems a 
safe enough retreat ; yet it is liable to its own notorious 
nuisances — to robbers by night, to rats, to fire. But the 20 
mail laughs at these terrors. To robbers, the answer is 
packed up and ready for delivery in the barrel of the guard's 
blunderbuss. Rats again ! there are' none about mail- 
coaches any more than snakes in Von Troll's Iceland^ ; 
except, indeed, now and then a parliamentary rat, who 25 
always hides his shame in what I have shown to be the 
"coal-cellar." And, as to fire, I never knew but one in a 
mail-coach; which was in the Exeter mail, and caused by 
an obstinate sailor bound to Devonport. Jack, making 
light of the law and the lawgiver that had set their faces 30 

1 '< Von TroiVs Iceland'''' : — The allusion is to a well-known chapter 
in Von Troil's work, entitled, " Concerning the Snakes of Iceland." 
The entire chapter consists of these six words — " There are no snakes 
in Icelafid,^^ 



lo SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCE Y 

against his offence, insisted on taking up a forbidden 
seat ^ in the rear of the roof, from which he could exchange 
his own yarns with those of the guard. No greater offence 
was then known to mail-coaches ; it was treason, it was 
5 Icesa majestas^ it was by tendency arson ; and the ashes of 
Jack's pipe, falling amongst the straw of the hinder boot, 
containing the mail-bags, raised a flame which (aided by 
the wind of our motion) threatened a revolution in the 
republic of letters. Yet even this left the sanctity of the 

10 box unviolated. In dignified repose, the coachman and 
myself sat on, resting with benign composure upon our 
knowledge that the fire would have to burn its way through 
four inside passengers before it could reach ourselves. I 
remarked to the coachman, with a quotation from VirgiPs 

15 "^neid " really too hackneyed — 

"Jam proximus ardet 
Ucalegon." 

1 ''''Forbidden seat'''' : — The very sternest code of rules was enforced 
upon the mails by the Post-office. Throughout England, only three 
outsides were allowed, of whom one was to sit on the box, and the 
other two immediately behind the box ; none, under any pretext, to 
come near the guard ; an indispensable caution ; since else, under the 
guise of a passenger, a robber might by any one of a thousand advan- 
tages — which sometimes are created, but always are favoured, by the 
animation of frank social intercourse — have disarmed the guard. 
Beyond the Scottish border, the regulation was so far relaxed as to 
allow oifour outsides, but not relaxed at all as to the mode of placing 
them. One, as before, was seated on the box, and the other three on 
the front of the roof, with a determinate and ample separation from 
the little insulated chair of the guard. This relaxation was conceded 
by way of compensating to Scotland her disadvantages in point of 
population. England, by the superior density of her population, might 
always count upon a large fund of profits in the fractional trips of 
chance passengers riding for short distances of two or three stages. In 
Scotland this chance counted for much less. And therefore, to make 
good the deficiency, Scotland was allowed a compensatory profit upon 
one extra passenger. 



THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH 1 1 

But, recollecting that the Virgilian part of the coachman's 
education might have been neglected, I interpreted so far 
as to say that perhaps at that moment the flames were 
catching hold of our worthy brother and inside passenger, 
Ucalegon. The coachman made no answer, — which is my 5 
own way when a stranger addresses me either in Syriac or 
in Coptic ; but by his faint sceptical smile he seemed to 
insinuate that he knew better, — for that Ucalegon, as it 
happened, was not in the way-bill, and therefore could not 
have been booked. 10 

No dignity is perfect which does not at some point ally 
itself with the mysterious. The connexion of the mail with 
the state and the executive government — a connexion 
obvious, but yet not strictly defined — gave to the whole 
mail establishment an official grandeur which did us service 15 
on the roads, and invested us with seasonable terrors. Not 
the less impressive were those terrors because their legal 
limits were imperfectly ascertained. Look at those turn- 
pike gates : with what deferential hurry, with what an 
obedient start, they fly open at our approach ! Look at 20 
that long line of carts and carters ahead, audaciously usurp- 
ing the very crest of the road. Ah ! traitors, they do not 
hear us as yet; but, as soon as the dreadful blast of our 
horn reaches them with proclamation of our approach, see 
with what frenzy of trepidation they fly to their horses' 25 
heads, and deprecate our wrath by the precipitation of 
their crane-neck quarterings. Treason they feel to be 
their crime ; each individual carter feels himself under the 
ban of confiscation and attainder; his blood is attainted 
through six generations ; and nothing is wanting but the 30 
headsman and his axe, the block and the sawdust, to close 
up the vista of his horrors. What ! shall it be within bene- 
fit of clergy to delay the king's message on the high road ? 
— to interrupt the great respirations, ebb and flood, systole 



12 SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCE Y 

and diastole, of the national intercourse ? — to endanger the 
safety of tidings running day and night between all nations 
and languages ? Or can it be fancied, amongst the weakest 
of men, that the bodies of the criminals will be given up to 
5 their widows for Christian burial ? Now, the doubts which 
were raised as to our powers did more to wrap them in 
terror, by wrapping them in uncertainty, than could have 
been effected by the sharpest definitions of the law from 
the Quarter Sessions. We, on our parts (we, the collective 

10 mail, I mean), did our utmost to exalt the idea of our 
privileges by the insolence with which we wielded them. 
Whether this insolence rested upon law that gave it a sanc- 
tion, or upon conscious power that haughtily dispensed with 
that sanction, equally it spoke from a potential station ; 

15 and the agent, in each particular insolence of the moment, 
was viewed reverentially, as one having authority. 

Sometimes after breakfast his Majesty^s mail would 
become frisky ; and, in its difficult wheelings amongst the 
intricacies of early markets, it would upset an apple-cart, a 

20 cart loaded with eggs, &c. Huge was the affliction and 
dismay, awful was the smash. I, as far as possible, endeav- 
oured in such a case to represent the conscience and moral 
sensibilities of the mail ; and, when wildernesses of eggs 
were lying poached under our horses' hoofs, then would I 

25 stretch forth my hands in sorrow, saying (in words too 
celebrated at that time, from the false echoes ^ of Marengo), 
"Ah! wherefore have we not time to weep over you?" — 
which was evidently impossible, since, in fact, we had not 

1 ^^ False echoes " ; — Yes, false ! for the words ascribed to Napoleon, 
as breathed to the memory of Desaix, never were uttered at all. They 
stand in the same category of theatrical fictions as the cry of the 
foundering line-of-battle ship Vengeur, as the vaunt of General Cam- 
bronne at Waterloo, " La Garde meurt, mais ne se rend pas," or as the 
repartees of Talleyrand. 



THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH 13 

time to laugh over them. Tied to post-office allowance in 
some cases of fifty minutes for eleven miles, could the royal 
mail pretend to undertake the offices of sympathy and con- 
dolence ? Could it be expected to provide tears for the 
accidents of the road ? If even it seemed to trample on s 
humanity, it did so, I felt, in discharge of its own more 
peremptory duties. 

Upholding the morality of the mail, a fortiori I upheld 
its rights ; as a matter of duty, I stretched to the utter- 
most its privilege of imperial precedency, and astonished 10 
weak minds by the feudal powers which I hinted to be 
lurking constructively in the charters of this proud estab- 
lishment. Once I remember being on the box of the 
Holyhead mail, between Shrewsbury and Oswestry, when 
a tawdry thing from Birmingham, some "Tallyho" or 15 
*' Highflyer," all flaunting with green and gold, came up 
alongside of us. What a contrast to our royal simplicity 
of form and colour in this plebeian wretch 1 The single 
ornament on our dark ground of chocolate colour was the 
mighty shield of the imperial arms, but emblazoned in pro- 20 
portions as modest as a signet-ring bears to a seal of office. 
Even this was displayed only on a single panel, whispering, 
rather than proclaiming, our relations to the mighty state ; 
whilst the beast from Birmingham, our green-and-gold friend 
from false, fleeting, perjured Brummagem, had as much 25 
writing and painting on its sprawling flanks as would have 
puzzled a decipherer from the tombs of Luxor. For some 
time this Birmingham machine ran along by our side — a 
piece of familiarity that already of itself seemed to me 
sufficiently Jacobinical. But all at once a movement of 30 
the horses announced a desperate intention of leaving us 
behind. "Do you see thatV^ I said to the coachman. — 
"I see," was his short answer. He was wide awake, — yet 
he waited longer than seemed prudent; for the horses of 



14 SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCE Y 

our audacious opponent had a disagreeable air of freshness 
and power. But his motive was loyal ; his wish was that 
the Birmingham conceit should be full-blown before he 
froze it. When that seemed right, he unloosed, or, to speak 
5 by a stronger word, he sprang, his known resources: he 
slipped our royal horses like cheetahs, or hunting-leopards, 
after the affrighted game. How they could retain such a 
reserve of fiery power after the work they had accomplished 
seemed hard to explain. But on our side, besides the physical 

lo superiority, was a tower of moral strength, namely the king's 
name, "which they upon the adverse faction wanted.'' 
Passing them without an effort, as it seemed, we threw 
them into the rear with so lengthening an interval 
between us as proved in itself the bitterest mockery of 

15 their presumption; whilst our guard blew back a shatter- 
ing blast of triumph that was really too painfully full of 
derision. 

I mention this little incident for its connexion with what 
followed. A Welsh rustic, sitting behind me, asked if I had 

20 not felt my heart burn within me during the progress of 
the race ? I said, with philosophic calmness. No ; because 
we were not racing with a mail, so that no glory could be 
gained. In fact, it was sufficiently mortifying that such a 
Birmingham thing should dare to challenge us. The Welsh- 

25 man replied that he didn't see that ; for that a cat might 
look at a king, and a Brummagem coach might lawfully 
race the Holyhead mail. ^' Race us, if you like," I replied, 
" though even that has an air of sedition ; but not beat us. 
This would have been treason ; and for its own sake I am 

30 glad that the *Tallyho ' was disappointed." So dissatisfied 
did the Welshman seem with this opinion that at last I was 
obliged to tell him a very fine story from one of our elder 
dramatists : viz., that once, in some far Oriental kingdom, 
when the sultan of all the land, with his princes, ladies, and 



THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH 15 

chief omrahs, were flying their falcons, a hawk suddenly 
flew at a majestic eagle, and, in defiance of the eagle's nat- 
ural advantages, in contempt also of the eagle's traditional 
royalty, and before the whole assembled field of astonished 
spectators from Agra and Lahore, killed the eagle on the 5 
spot. Amazement seized the sultan at the unequal contest, 
and burning admiration for its unparalleled result. He com- 
manded that the hawk should be brought before him ; he 
caressed the bird with enthusiasm ; and he ordered that, 
for the commemoration of his matchless courage, a diadem 10 
of gold and rubies should be solemnly placed on the hawk's 
head, but then that, immediately after this solemn coro- 
nation, the bird should be led off to execution, as the most 
valiant indeed of traitors, but not the less a traitor, as 
having dared to rise rebelliously against his liege lord 15 
and anointed sovereign, the eagle. "Now," said I to the 
Welshman, " to you and me, as men of refined sensibilities, 
how painful it would have been that this poor Brummagem 
brute, the 'Tallyho,' in the impossible case of a victory 
over us, should have been crowned with Birmingham tinsel, 20 
with paste diamonds and Roman pearls, and then led off 
to instant execution." The Welshman doubted if that 
could be warranted by law. And, when I hinted at the 6th 
of Edward Longshanks, chap. 18, for regulating the prece- 
dency of coaches, as being probably the statute relied 25 
on for the capital punishment of such offences, he replied 
drily that, if the attempt to pass a mail really were treason- 
able, it was a pity that the " Tallyho " appeared to have so 
imperfect an acquaintance with law. 

The modern modes of travelling cannot compare with 30 
the old mail-coach system in grandeur and power. They 
boast of more velocity, — not, however, as a consciousness, 
but as a fact of our lifeless knowledge, resting upon alien 
evidence : as, for instance, because somebody says that we 



1 6 SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCE Y 

have gone fifty miles in the hour, though we are far from 
feeling it as a personal experience ; or upon the evidence 
of a result, as that actually we find ourselves in York four 
hours after leaving London. Apart from such an assertion, 
5 or such a result, I myself am little aware of the pace. But, 
seated on the old mail-coach, we needed no evidence out 
of ourselves to indicate the velocity. On this system the 
word was not magna loquimur^ as upon railways, but vivimus. 
Yes, " magna vivimus " / we do not make verbal ostentation 

lo of our grandeurs, we realise our grandeurs in act, and in the 
very experience of life. The vital experience of the glad 
animal sensibilities made doubts impossible on the question 
of our speed ; we heard our speed, we saw it, we felt it as a 
thrilling; and this speed was not the product of blind insen- 

15 sate agencies, that had no sympathy to give, but was incar- 
nated in the fiery eyeballs of the noblest amongst brutes, 
in his dilated nostril, spasmodic muscles, and thunder- 
beating hoofs. The sensibility of the horse, uttering itself 
in the maniac light of his eye, might be the last vibration 

20 of such a movement ; the glory of Salamanca might be 
the first. But the intervening links that connected them, 
that spread the earthquake of battle into the eyeballs of the 
horse, were the heart of man and its electric thrillings — 
kindling in the rapture of the fiery strife, and then propa- 

25 gating its own tumults by contagious shouts and gestures 
to the heart of his servant the horse. But now, on the new 
system of travelling, iron tubes and boilers have discon- 
nected man's heart from the ministers of his locomotion. 
Nile nor Trafalgar has power to raise an extra bubble in a 

30 steam-kettle. The galvanic cycle is broken up for ever ; man's 
imperial nature no longer sends itself forward through the 
electric sensibility of the horse ; the inter-agencies are gone 
in the mode of communication between the horse and his 
master out of which grew so many aspects of sublimity 



THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH 17 

under accidents of mists that hid, or sudden blazes that 
revealed, of mobs that agitated, or midnight solitudes that 
awed. Tidings fitted to convulse all nations must hence- 
forwards travel by culinary process ; and the trumpet that 
once announced from afar the laurelled mail, heart-shaking 5 
when heard screaming on the wind and proclaiming itself 
through the darkness to every village or solitary house on 
its route, has now given way for ever to the pot-wallopings 
of the boiler. Thus have perished multiform openings for 
public expressions of interest, scenical yet natural, in great 10 
national tidings, — for revelations of faces and groups that 
could not offer themselves amongst the fluctuating mobs 
of a railway station. The gatherings of gazers about a 
laurelled mail had one centre, and acknowledged one sole 
interest. But the crowds attending at a railway station 15 
have as little unity as running water, and own as many 
centres as there are separate carriages in the train. 

How else, for example, than as a constant watcher for 
the dawn, and for the London mail that in summer months 
entered about daybreak amongst the lawny thickets of 20 
Marlborough forest, couldst thou, sweet Fanny of the Bath 
road, have become the glorified inmate of my dreams t 
Yet Fanny, as the loveliest young woman for face and per- 
son that perhaps in my whole life I have beheld, merited 
the station which even now, from a distance of forty years, 25 
she holds in my dreams ; yes, though by links of natural 
association she brings along with her a troop of dread- 
ful creatures, fabulous and not fabulous, that are more 
abominable to the heart than Fanny and the dawn are 
delightful. 30 

Miss Fanny of the Bath road, strictly speaking, lived at 
a mile's distance from that road, but came so continually 
to meet the mail that I on my frequent transits rarely 
missed her, and naturally connected her image with the 



1 8 SELECTIONS FROM BE QUINCE Y 

great thoroughfare where only I had ever seen her. Why- 
she came so punctually I do not exactly know ; but I 
believe with some burden of commissions, to be executed 
in Bath, which had gathered to her own residence as a cen- 
5 tral rendezvous for converging them. The mail-coachman 
who drove the Bath mail and wore the royal livery^ hap- 
pened to be Fanny's grandfather. A good man he was, 
that loved his beautiful granddaughter, and, loving her 
wisely, was vigilant over her deportment in any case where 

lo young Oxford might happen to be concerned. Did my 
vanity then suggest that I myself, individually, could fall 
within the line of his terrors ? Certainly not, as regarded 
any physical pretensions that I could plead ; for Fanny (as 
a chance passenger from her own neighbourhood once told 

15 me) counted in her train a hundred and ninety-nine pro- 
fessed admirers, if not open aspirants to her favour ; and 
probably not one of the whole brigade but excelled myself 
in personal advantages. Ulysses even, with the unfair 
advantage of his accursed bow, could hardly have under- 

20 taken that amount of suitors. So the danger might have 
seemed slight — only that woman is universally aristocratic; 
it is amongst her nobilities of heart that she is so. Now, 
the aristocratic distinctions in my favour might easily with 
Miss Fanny have compensated my physical deficiencies. 

25 Did I then make love to Fanny ? Why, yes ; about as 

lu Worg the royal livery''''-: — The general impression was that the 
royal livery belonged of right to the mail-coachmen as their profes- 
sional dress. But that was an error. To the guard it did belong, I 
believe, and was obviously essential as an official warrant, and as a 
means of instant identification for his person, in the discharge of his 
important public duties. But the coachman, and especially if his 
place in the series did not connect him immediately with London 
and the General Post-Office, obtained the scarlet coat only as an 
honorary distinction after long (or, if not long, trying and special) 
service. 



THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH 



19 



much love as one could make whilst the mail was changing 
horses — a process which, ten years later, did not occupy- 
above eighty seconds ; but then^ — viz., about Waterloo — 
it occupied five times eighty. Now, four hundred seconds 
offer a field quite ample enough for whispering into a young 5 
woman's ear a great deal of truth, and (by way of paren- 
thesis) some trifle of falsehood. Grandpapa did right, there- 
fore, to watch me. And yet, as happens too often to the 
grandpapas of earth in a contest with the admirers of grand- 
daughters, how vainly would he have watched me had I 10 
meditated any evil whispers to Fanny ! She, it is my belief, 
would have protected herself against any man's evil sug- 
gestions. But he, as the result showed, could not have 
intercepted the opportunities for such suggestions. Yet, 
why not.'* Was he not active? Was he not blooming? 15 
Blooming he was as Fanny herself. 

" Say, all our praises why should lords " 

Stop, that's not the line. 

" Say, all our roses why should girls engross? " 

The coachman showed rosy blossoms on his face deeper 20 
even than his granddaughter's — his being drawn from the 
ale-cask, Fanny's from the fountains of the dawn. But, in 
spite of his blooming face, some infirmities he had ; and 
one particularly in which he too much resembled a croco- 
dile. This lay in a monstrous inaptitude for turning round. 25 
The crocodile, I presume, owes that inaptitude to the absurd 
length of his back ; but in our grandpapa it arose rather from 
the absurd breadth of his back, combined, possibly, with 
some growing stiffness in his legs. Now, upon this croco- 
dile infirmity of his I planted a human advantage for ten- 30 
dering my homage to Miss Fanny. In defiance of all his 
honourable vigilance, no sooner had he presented to us his 



20 SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCE Y 

mighty Jovian back (what a field for displaying to man- 
kind his royal scarlet !), whilst inspecting professionally 
the buckles, the straps, and the silvery turrets ^ of his har- 
ness, than I raised Miss Fanny's hand to my lips, and, by 
5 the mixed tenderness and respectfulness of my manner, 
caused her easily to understand how happy it would make 
me to rank upon her list as No. lo or 12 : in which case a 
few casualties amongst her lovers (and, observe, they hanged 
liberally in those days) might have promoted me speedily 

10 to the top of the tree; as, on the other hand, with how 
much loyalty of submission I acquiesced by anticipation 
in her award, supposing that she should plant me in the 
very rearward of her favour, as No. 199 + i. Most truly 
I loved this beautiful and ingenuous girl; and, had it not 

15 been for the Bath mail, timing all courtships by post-office 
allowance, heaven only knows what might have come of it. 
People talk of being over head and ears in love ; now, the 
mail was the cause that I sank only over ears in love, — 
which, you know, still left a trifle of brain to overlook the 

20 whole conduct of the affair. 

Ah, reader ! when I look back upon those days, it seems 
to me that all things change — all things perish. " Perish 
the roses and the palms of kings '' : perish even the crowns 
and trophies of Waterloo: thunder and lightning are not 

25 the thunder and lightning which I remember. Roses are 
degenerating. The Fannies of our island — though this I 
say with reluctance — are not visibly improving ; and the 

1" Turrets'*'* : — As one who loves and venerates Chaucer for his 
unrivalled merits of tenderness, of picturesque characterisation, and 
of narrative skill, I noticed with great pleasure that the word torrettes 
is used by him to designate the little devices through which the reins 
are made to pass. This same word, in the same exact sense, I heard 
uniformly used by many scores of illustrious mail-coachmen to whose 
confidential friendship I had the honour of being admitted in my 
younger days. 



THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH 21 

Bath road is notoriously superannuated. Crocodiles, you 
will say, are stationary. Mr. Waterton tells me that the 
crocodile does not change, — that a cayman, in fact, or an 
alligator, is just as good for riding upon as he was in the 
time of the Pharaohs. That may be ; but the reason is 5 
that the crocodile does not live fast — he is a slow coach. 
I believe it is generally understood among naturalists that 
the crocodile is a blockhead. It is my own impression 
that the Pharaohs were also blockheads. Now, as the 
Pharaohs and the crocodile domineered over Egyptian 10 
society, this accounts for a singular mistake that prevailed 
through innumerable generations on the Nile. The croco- 
dile made the ridiculous blunder of supposing man to be 
meant chiefly for his own eating. Man, taking a different 
view of the subject, naturally met that mistake by another: 15 
he viewed the crocodile as a thing sometimes to worship, 
but always to run away from. And this continued till 
Mr. Waterton^ changed the relations between the animals. 
The mode of escaping from the reptile he showed to be 
not by running away, but by leaping on its back booted 20 
and spurred. The two animals had misunderstood each 
other. The use of the crocodile has now been cleared 
up — viz., to be ridden; and the final cause of man is that 
he may improve the health of the crocodile by riding him 

1 " Mr. Waterton " ; — Had the reader lived through the last gener- 
ation, he would not need to be told that, some thirty or thirty-five 
years back, Mr. Waterton, a distinguished country gentleman of ancient 
family in Northumberland, publicly mounted and rode in top-boots a 
savage old crocodile, that was restive and very impertinent, but all to 
no purpose. The crocodile jibbed and tried to kick, but vainly. 
He was no more able^to throw the squire than Sinbad was td throw 
the old scoundrel who used his back without paying for it, until 
he discovered a mode (slightly immoral, perhaps, though some think 
not) of murdering the old fraudulent jockey, and so circuitously of 
unhorsing him. 



2 2 SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCE Y 

a-fox-hunting before breakfast. And it is pretty certain 
that any crocodile who has been regularly hunted through 
the season, and is master of the weight he carries, will take 
a six-barred gate now as well as ever he would have done 
5 in the infancy of the pyramids. 

If, therefore, the crocodile does not change, all things else 
undeniably do : even the shadow of the pyramids grows less. 
And often the restoration in vision of Fanny and the Bath 
road makes me too pathetically sensible of that truth. Out 

lo of the darkness, if I happen to call back the image of Fanny, 
up rises suddenly from a gulf of forty years a rose in June ; 
or, if I think for an instant of the rose in June, up rises 
the heavenly face of Fanny. One after the other, like the 
antiphonies in the choral service, rise Fanny and the rose in 

15 June, then back again the rose in June and Fanny. Then 
come both together, as in a chorus — roses and Fannies, 
Fannies and roses, without end, thick as blossoms in para- 
dise. Then comes a venerable crocodile, in a royal livery 
of scarlet and gold, with sixteen capes ; and the crocodile 

20 is driving four-in-hand from the box of the Bath mail. And 
suddenly we upon the mail are pulled up by a mighty dial, 
sculptured with the hours, that mingle with the heavens 
and the heavenly host. Then all at once we are arrived at 
Marlborough forest, amongst the lovely households^ of the 

25 roe-deer ; the deer and their fawns retire into the dewy 
thickets ; the thickets are rich with roses ; once again the 
roses call up the sweet countenance of Fanny; and she, 

1 " Households " ; — Roe-deer do not congregate in herds like the 
fallow or the red deer, but by separate families, parents and children ; 
which feature of approximation to the sanctity of human hearths, 
added to their comparatively miniature and graceful proportions, con- 
ciliates to them an interest of peculiar tenderness, supposing even that 
this beautiful creature is less characteristically impressed with the 
grandeurs of savage and forest life. 



THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH 23 

being the granddaughter of a crocodile, awakens a dreadful 
host of semi-legendary animals — griffins, dragons, basilisks, 
sphinxes — till at length the whole vision of fighting images 
crowds into one towering armorial shield, a vast emblazonry 
of human charities and human loveliness that have perished, 5 
but quartered heraldically with unutterable and demoniac 
natures, whilst over all rises, as a surmounting crest, one 
fair female hand, with the forefinger pointing, in sweet, 
sorrowful admonition, upwards to heaven, where is sculp- 
tured the eternal writing which proclaims the frailty of 10 
earth and her children. 

Going Down with Victory 

But the grandest chapter of our experience within the 
whole mail-coach service was on those occasions when we 
went down from London with the news of victory. A 
period of about ten years stretched from Trafalgar to 15 
Waterloo; the second and third years of which period 
(1806 and 1807) were comparatively sterile; but the other 
nine (from 1805 to 18 15 inclusively) furnished a long suc- 
cession of victories, the least of which, in such a contest of 
Titans, had an inappreciable value of position : partly for 20 
its absolute interference with the plans of our enemy, but 
still more from its keeping alive through central Europe 
the sense of a deep-seated vulnerability in France. Even 
to tease the coasts of our enemy, to mortify them by con- 
tinual blockades, to insult them by capturing if it were but 25 
a baubling schooner under the eyes of their arrogant armies, 
repeated from time to time a sullen proclamation of power 
lodged in one quarter to which the hopes of Christendom 
turned in secret. How much more loudly must this procla- 
mation have spoken in the audacity^ of having bearded the 30 

"^^^ Audacity'''' : — Such the French accounted it; and it has struck 
me that Soult would not have been so popular in London, at the period 



2 4 SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCE Y 

elite of their troops, and having beaten them in pitched 
battles ! Five years of life it was worth paying down for 
the privilege of an outside place on a mail-coach, when 
carrying down the first tidings of any such event. And it 
5 is to be noted that, from our insular situation, and the mul- 
titude of our frigates disposable for the rapid transmission 
of intelligence, rarely did any unauthorised rumour steal 
away a prelibation from the first aroma of the regular 
despatches. The government news was generally the 

10 earliest news. 

From eight p.m. to fifteen or twenty minutes later imagine 
the mails assembled on parade in Lombard Street ; where, 
at that time, ^ and not in St. Martin's-le-Grand, was seated 
the General Post-OfBce. In w^hat exact strength we mus- 

15 tered I do not remember ; but, from the length of each sep- 
arate attclage^ we filled the street, though a long one, and 
though we were drawn up in double file. On any night the 
spectacle was beautiful. The absolute perfection of all the 
appointments about the carriages and the harness, their 

20 strength, their brilliant cleanliness, their beautiful sim- 
plicity — but, more than all, the royal magnificence of the 
horses — were what might first have fixed the attention. 

of her present Majesty's coronation, or in Manchester, on occasion of 
his visit to that town, if they had been aware of the insolence with which 
he spoke of us in notes written at intervals from the field of Waterloo. 
As though it had been mere felony in our army to look a French one 
in the face, he said in more notes than one, dated from two to four p.m. 
on the field of Waterloo, " Here are the English — we have them ; they 
are caught eit flagrant delit.^'' Yet no man should have known us better ; 
no man had drunk deeper from the cup of humiliation than Soult had 
in 1809, when ejected by us with headlong violence from Oporto, and 
pursued through a long line of wrecks to the frontier of Spain ; and 
subsequently at Albuera, in the bloodiest of recorded battles, to say 
nothing of Toulouse, he should have learned our pretensions. 
1 " At that time " ; — I speak of the era previous to Waterloo. 



THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH 25 

Every carriage on every morning in the year was taken 
down to an official inspector for examination : wheels, 
axles, linchpins, pole, glasses, lamps, were all critically 
probed and tested. Every part of every carriage had been 
cleaned, every horse had been groomed, with as much rigour 5 
as if they belonged to a private gentleman ; and that part 
of the spectacle offered itself always. But the night before 
us is a night of victory ; and, behold ! to the ordinary dis- 
play what a heart-shaking addition ! — horses, men, car- 
riages, all are dressed in laurels and flowers, oak-leaves and 10 
ribbons. The guards, as being officially his Majesty's ser- 
vants, and of the coachmen such as are within the privilege 
of the post-office, wear the royal liveries of course ; and, as 
it is summer (for all the land victories were naturally won 
in summer), they wear, on this fine evening, these liveries 15 
exposed to view, without any covering of upper coats. 
Such a costume, and the elaborate arrangement of the 
laurels in their hats, dilate their -hearts, by giving to them 
openly a personal connexion with the great news in which 
already they have the general interest of patriotism. That 20 
great national sentiment surmounts and quells all sense of 
ordinary distinctions. Those passengers who happen to 
be gentlemen are now hardly to be distinguished as such 
except by dress; for the usual reserve of their manner in 
speaking to the attendants has on this night melted away. 25 
One heart, one pride, one glory, connects every man by the 
transcendent bond of his national blood. The spectators, 
who are numerous beyond precedent, express their sym- 
pathy with these fervent feelings by continual hurrahs. 
Every moment are shouted aloud by the post-office ser- 30 
vants, and summoned to draw up, the great ancestral names 
of cities known to history through a thousand years — 
Lincoln, Winchester, Portsmouth, Gloucester, Oxford, Bris- 
tol, Manchester, York, Newcastle, Edinburgh, Glasgow, 



2 6 SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCE Y 

Perth, Stirling, Aberdeen — expressing the grandeur of the 
empire by the antiquity of its towns, and the grandeur of 
the mail establishment by the diffusive radiation of its sep- 
arate missions. Every moment you hear the thunder of 
5 lids locked down upon the mail-bags. That sound to each 
individual mail is the signal for drawing off ; which process 
is the finest part of the entire spectacle. Then come the 
horses into play. Horses ! can these be horses that bound 
off with the action and gestures of leopards t What stir ! — 

10 what sea-like ferment! — what a thundering of wheels! — 
what a trampling of hoofs ! — what a sounding of trumpets I 
— what farewell cheers — what redoubling peals of brotherly 
congratulation, connecting the name of the particular mail 
— " Liverpool for ever ! " — with the name of the particular 

15 victory — " Badajoz for ever ! '^ or ** Salamanca for ever ! " 
The half-slumbering consciousness that all night long, and 
all the next day — perhaps for even a longer period — many 
of these mails, like fire racing along a train of gunpowder, 
will be kindling at every instant new successions of burn- 

20 ing joy, has an obscure effect of multiplying the victory 
itself, by multiplying to the imagination into infinity the 
stages of its progressive diffusion. A fiery arrow seems to 
be let loose, which from that moment is destined to travel, 
without intermission, westwards for three hundred^ miles 

1" Three hundred'''' : — Of necessity, this scale of measurement, to 
an American, if he happens to be a thoughtless man, must sound ludi- 
crous. Accordingly, I remember a case in which an American writer 
indulges himself in the luxury of a little fibbing, by ascribing to an 
Englishman a pompous account of the Thames, constructed entirely 
upon American ideas of grandeur, and concluding in something like 
these terms: — "And, sir, arriving at London, this mighty father of 
rivers attains a breadth of at least two furlongs, having, in its winding 
course, traversed the astonishing distance of one hundred and seventy 
miles." And this the candid American thinks it fair to contrast with 
the scale of the Mississippi. Now, it is hardly worth while to answer 



THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH 27 

— northwards for six hundred; and the sympathy of our 
Lombard Street friends at parting is exalted a hundredfold 
by a sort of visionary sympathy with the yet slumbering 
sympathies which in so vast a succession we are going to 
awake. 5 

Liberated from the embarrassments of the city, and 
issuing into the broad uncrowded avenues of the northern 
suburbs, we soon begin to enter upon our natural pace of 
ten miles an hour. In the broad light of the summer even- 
ing, the sun, perhaps, only just at the point of setting, we 10 
are seen from every storey of every house. Heads of every 
age crowd to the windows ; young and old understand the 
language of our victorious symbols ; and rolling volleys of 
sympathising cheers run along us, behind us, and before us. 
The beggar, rearing himself against the wall, forgets his 15 

a pure fiction gravely ; else one might say that no Englishman out of 
Bedlam ever thought of looking in an island for the rivers of a conti- 
nent, nor, consequently, could have thought of looking for the peculiar 
grandeur of the Thames in the length of its course, or in the extent of 
soil which it drains. Yet, if he had been so absurd, the American might 
have recollected that a river, not to be compared with the Thames even 
as to volume of water — viz., the Tiber — has contrived to make itself 
heard of in this world for twenty-five centuries to an extent not reached 
as yet by any river, however corpulent, of his own land. The glory of 
the Thames is measured by the destiny of the population to which it 
ministers, by the commerce which it supports, by the grandeur of the 
empire in which, though far from the largest, it is the most influential 
stream. Upon some such scale, and not by a transfer of Columbian 
standards, is the course of our English mails to be valued. The 
American may fancy the effect of his own valuations to our English 
ears by supposing the case of a Siberian glorifying his country in these 
terms : — " These wretches, sir, in France and England, cannot march 
half a mile in any direction without finding a house where food can be 
had and lodging ; whereas such is the noble desolation of our magnifi- 
cent country that in many a direction for a thousand miles I will engage 
that a dog shall not find shelter from a snow-storm, nor a wren find an 
apology for breakfast.'* 



28 SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINC^Y 

lameness — real or assumed — thinks not of his whining 
trade, but stands erect, with bold exulting smiles, as we 
pass him. The victory has healed him, and says, Be thou 
whole ! Women and children, from garrets alike and cellars, 
5 through infinite London, look down or look up with loving 
eyes upon our gay ribbons and our martial laurels ; some- 
times kiss their hands ; sometimes hang out, as signals of 
affection, pocket-handkerchiefs, aprons, dusters, anything 
that, by catching the summer breezes, will express an aerial 

lo jubilation. On the London side of Barnet, to which we 
draw near within a few minutes after nine, observe that 
private carriage which is approaching us. The w^eather 
being so warm, the glasses are all down ; and one may read, 
as on the stage of a theatre, everything that goes on within. 

15 It contains three ladies — one likely to be "mamma," 
and two of seventeen or eighteen, who are probably her 
daughters. What lovely animation, what beautiful unpre- 
meditated pantomime, explaining to us every syllable that 
passes, in these ingenuous girls ! By the sudden start 

20 and raising of the hands on first discovering our laurelled 
equipage, by the sudden movement and appeal to the elder 
lady from both of them, and by the heightened colour on 
their animated countenances, we can almost hear them 
saying, " See, see ! Look at their laurels ! Oh, mamma ! 

25 there has been a great battle in Spain ; and it has been a 
great victory." In a moment we are on the point of pass- 
ing them. We passengers — I on the box, and the two 
on the roof behind me — raise our hats to the ladies ; the 
coachman makes his professional salute with the whip ; the 

30 guard even, though punctilious on the matter of his dignity 
as an officer under the crown, touches his hat. The ladies 
move to us, in return, with a winning graciousness of 
gesture ; all smile on each side in a way that nobody could 
misunderstand, and that nothing short of a grand national 



THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH 29 

sympathy could so instantaneously prompt. Will these 
ladies say that we are nothing to them ? Oh no ; they will 
not say that They cannot deny — they do not deny — 
that for this night they are our sisters ; gentle or simple, 
scholar or illiterate servant, for twelve hours to come, 5 
we on the outside have the honour to be their brothers. 
Those poor women, again, who stop to gaze upon us with 
delight at the entrance of Barnet, and seem, by their air of 
weariness, to be returning from labour ^ — do you mean to 
say that they are washerwomen and charwomen ? Oh, my 10 
poor friend, you are quite mistaken. I assure you they 
stand in a far higher rank ; for this one night they feel 
themselves by birthright to be daughters of England, and 
answer to no humbler title. 

Every joy, however, even rapturous joy — such is the sad 15 
law of earth — may carry with it grief, or fear of grief, to 
some. Three miles beyond Barnet, we see approaching us 
another private carriage, nearly repeating the circumstances 
of the former case. Here, also, the glasses are all down ; 
here, also, is an elderly lady seated ; but the two daughters 20 
are missing ; for the single young person sitting by the lady's 
side seems to be an attendant — so I judge from her dress, 
and her air of respectful reserve. The lady is in mourning ; 
and her countenance expresses sorrow. At first she does not 
look up ; so that I believe she is not aware of our approach, 25 
until she hears the measured beating of our horses' hoofs. 
Then she raises her eyes to settle them painfully on our 
triumphal equipage. Our decorations explain the case to her 
at once ; but she beholds them with apparent anxiety, or 
even with terror. Some time before this, I, finding it diffi- 30 
cult to hit a flying mark when embarrassed by the coach- 
man's person and reins intervening, had given to the guard 
a " Courier " evening paper, containing the gazette, for the 
next carriage that might pass. Accordingly he tossed it 



30 SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCEY 

in, so folded that the huge capitals expressing some such 
legend as glorious victory might catch the eye at once. 
To see the paper, however, at all, interpreted as it was by 
our ensigns of triumph, explained everything; and, if the 
5 guard were right in thinking the lady to have received it 
with a gesture of horror, it could not be doubtful that she 
had suffered some deep personal affliction in connexion with 
this Spanish war. 

Here, now, was the case of one who, having formerly 

10 suffered, might, erroneously perhaps, be distressing herself 
with anticipations of another similar suffering. That same 
night, and hardly three hours later, occurred the reverse 
case. A poor woman, who too probably would find herself, in 
a day or two, to have suffered the heaviest of afflictions by 

15 the battle, blindly allowed herself to express an exultation 
so unmeasured in the news and its details as gave to her the 
appearance which amongst Celtic Highlanders is called fey. 
This was at some little town where we changed horses an 
hour or two after midnight. Some fair or wake had kept 

20 the people up out of their beds, and had occasioned a partial 
illumination of the stalls and booths, presenting an unusual 
but very impressive effect. We saw many lights moving 
about as we drew near ; and perhaps the most striking scene 
on the whole route was our reception at this place. The 

25 flashing of torches and the beautiful radiance of blue lights 
(technically, Bengal lights) upon the heads of our horses ; 
the fine effect of such a showery and ghostly illumination 
falling upon Our flowers and glittering laurels ^ ; whilst all 
around ourselves, that formed a centre of light, the darkness 

30 gathered on the rear and flanks in massy blackness : these 
optical splendours, together with the prodigious enthusiasm 

1 " Glittering laurels " ; — I must observe that the colour of green 
suffers almost a spiritual change and exaltation under the effect of 
Bengal lights. 



THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH 31 

of the people, composed a picture at once scenical and affect- 
ing, theatrical and holy. As we staid for three or four 
minutes, I alighted ; and immediately from a dismantled 
stall in the street, where no doubt she had been presiding 
through the earlier part of the night, advanced eagerly a 5 
middle-aged woman. The sight of my newspaper it was 
that had drawn her attention upon myself. The victory 
which we were carrying down to the provinces on this 
occasion was the imperfect one of Talavera — imperfect for 
its results, such was the virtual treachery of the Spanish 10 
general, Cuesta, but not imperfect in its ever-memorable 
heroism. I told her the main outline of the battle. The 
agitation of her enthusiasm had been so conspicuous when 
listening, and when first applying for information, that I 
could not but ask her if she had not some relative in the 15 
Peninsular army. Oh yes ; her only son was there. In 
what regiment t He was a trooper in the 23d Dragoons. 
My heart sank within me as she made that answer. This 
sublime regiment, which an Englishman should never men- 
tion without raising his hat to their memory, had made the 20 
most memorable and effective charge recorded in military 
annals. They leaped their horses — over a trench where ; 
they could ; mto it, and with the result of death or muti- 
lation, when they could not. What proportion cleared the 
trench is nowhere stated. Those who did closed up and 25 
went down upon the enemy with such divinity of fervour 
(I use the word divinity by design : the inspiration of God 
must have prompted this movement for those whom even 
then He was calling to His presence) that two results fol- 
lowed. As regarded the enemy, this 23d Dragoons, not, I 30 
believe, originally three hundred and fifty strong, paralysed 
a French column six thousand strong, then ascended the 
hill, and fixed the gaze of the whole French army. As 
regarded themselves, the 23d were supposed at first to have 



32 SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCE Y 

been barely not annihilated ; but eventually, I believe, about 
one in four survived. And this, then, was the regiment — 
a regiment already for some hours glorified and hallowed 
to the ear of all London, as lying stretched, by a large 
5 majority, upon one bloody aceldama — in which the young 
trooper served whose mother was now talking in a spirit 
of such joyous enthusiasm. Did I tell her the truth ? Had 
I the heart to break up her dreams ? No. To-morrow, said 
I to myself- — to-morrow, or the next day, will publish the 

lo worst. For one night more wherefore should she not sleep 
in peace ? After to-morrow the chances are too many that 
peace will forsake her pillow. This brief respite, then, let 
her owe to my gift and my forbearance. But, if I told her 
not of the bloody price that had been paid, not therefore 

15 was I silent on the contributions from her son's regiment 
to that day's service and glory. I showed her not the 
funeral banners under which the noble regiment was sleep- 
ing. I lifted not the overshadowing laurels from the bloody 
trench in which horse and rider lay mangled together. But 

20 I told her how these dear children of England, officers and 
privates, had leaped their horses over all obstacles as gaily 
as hunters to the morning's chase. I told her how they 
rode their horses into the midst of death, — saying to 
myself, but not saying to her^ " and laid down their young 

25 lives for thee, O m.other England! as willingly — poured 
out their noble blood as cheerfully — as ever, after a long 
day's sport, when infants, they had rested their weary heads 
upon their mother's knees, or had sunk to sleep in her arms." 
Strange it is, yet true, that she seemed to have no fears for 

30 her son's safety, even after this knowledge that the 23d 
Dragoons had been memorably engaged ; but so much was 
she enraptured by the knowledge that his regiment, and 
therefore that he^ had rendered conspicuous service in the 
dreadful conflict — a service which had actually made them, 



THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH :i^'7^ 

within the last twelve hours, the foremost topic of conver- 
sation in London — so absolutely was fear swallowed up in 
joy — that, in the mere simplicity of her fervent nature, the 
poor woman threw her arms round my neck, as, she thought 
of her son, and gave to me the kiss which secretly was meant 5 
for him. 

Section II — The Vision of Sudden Death 

What is to be taken as the predominant opinion of man, 
reflective and philosophic, upon sudden death ? It is 
remarkable that, in different conditions of society, sudden 
death has been variously regarded as the consummation 10 
of an earthly career most fervently to be desired, or, again, 
as that consummation which is with most horror to be 
deprecated. Caesar the Dictator, at his last dinner-party 
(cosnd)^ on the very evening before his assassination, when 
the minutes of his earthly career were numbered, being 15 
asked what death, in his judgment, might be pronounced 
the most eligible, replied "That which should be most 
sudden." On the other hand, the divine Litany of our 
English Church, when breathing forth supplications, as if 
in some representative character, for the whole human race 20 
prostrate before God, places such a death in the very van 
of horrors : " From lightning and tempest ; from plague, 
pestilence, and famine ; from battle and murder, and from 
sudden death — Good Lord, deliver us^ Sudden death is 
here made to crown the climax in a grand ascent of calam- 25 
ities ; it is ranked among the last of curses ; and yet by the 
noblest of Romans it was ranked as the first of blessings. 
In that difference most readers will see little more than the 
essential difference between Christianity and Paganism. 
But this, on consideration, I doubt. The Christian Church 30 
may be right in its estimate of sudden death ; and it is a 



34 SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCE Y 

natural feeling, though after all^ it may also be an Infirm 
one, to wish for a quiet dismissal from life, as that which 
seems most reconcilable with meditation, with penitential 
retrospects, and with the humilities of farewell prayer. 
5 There does not, however, occur to me any direct scriptural 
warrant for this earnest petition of the English Litany, 
unless under a special construction of the word *^ sudden." 
It seems a petition indulged rather and conceded to human 
infirmity than exacted from human piety. It is not so much 

lo a doctrine built upon the eternities of the Christian sys- 
tem as a plausible opinion built upon special varieties of 
physical temperament. Let that, however, be as it may, 
two remarks suggest themselves as prudent restraints upon 
a doctrine ivhich else may wander, and has wandered, into 

15 an uncharitable superstition. The first is this: that many 
people are likely to exaggerate the horror of a sudden death 
from the disposition to lay a false stress upon words or acts 
simply because by an accident they have become Jinal ^rds 
or acts. If a man dies, for instance, by some sudd& death 

20 when he happens to be intoxicated, such a death is falsely 
regarded with peculiar horror ; as though the intoxication 
were suddenly exalted into a blasphemy. But that is 
unphilosophic. The man was, or he was not, habitually a 
drunkard. If not, if his intoxication were a solitary acci- 

25 dent, there can be no reason for allowing special emphasis 
to this act simply because through misfortune it became 
his final act. Nor, on the other hand, if it were no acci- 
dent, but one of his habitual transgressions, will it be the 
more habitual or the more a transgression because some 

30 sudden calamity, surprising him, has caused this habitual 
transgression to be also a final one. Could the man have 
had any reason even dimly to foresee his own sudden death, 
there would have been a new feature in his act of intem- 
perance — a feature of presumption and irreverence, as in 



THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH 35 

one that, having known himself drawing near to the pres- 
ence of God, should have suited his demeanour to an 
expectation so awful. But this is no part of the case 
supposed. And the only new element in the man's act 
is not any element of special immorality, but simply of s 
special misfortune. 

The other remark has reference to the meaning of the 
word sudden. Very possibly Caesar and the Christian 
Church do not differ in the way supposed, — that is, do 
not differ by any difference of doctrine as between Pagan lo 
and Christian views of the moral temper appropriate to 
death ; but perhaps they are contemplating different cases. 
Both contemplate a violent death, a Bta^ai/aros — death 
that is yStato?, or, in other words, death that is brought 
about, not by internal and spontaneous change, but by 15 
active force having its origin from without. In this 
meaning the two authorities agree. Thus far they are in 
harmony. But the difference is that the Roman by the 
word " sudden " means unlingeringy whereas the Christian 
Litany by *^sudden death *' means a death without warnings 20 
consequently without any available summons to religious 
preparation. The poor mutineer who kneels down to gather 
into his heart the bullets from twelve firelocks of his pity- 
ing comrades dies by a most sudden death in Caesar's sense ; 
one shock, one mighty spasm, one (possibly not one) groan, 25 
and all is over. But, in the sense of the Litany, the muti- 
neer's death is far from sudden : his offence originally, his 
imprisonment, his trial, the interval between his sentence 
and its execution, having all furnished him with separate 
warnings of his fate — having all summoned him to meet 30 
it with solemn preparation. 

Here at once, in this sharp verbal distinction, we 
comprehend the faithful earnestness with which a holy 
Christian Church pleads on behalf of her poor departing 



36 SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCEY 

children that God would vouchsafe to them the last great 
privilege and distinction possible on a death-bed, viz., 
the opportunity of untroubled preparation for facing this 
mighty trial. Sudden death, as a mere variety in the modes 
5 of dying where death in some shape is inevitable, proposes 
a question of choice which, equally in the Roman and the 
Christian sense, will be variously answered according to 
each man's variety of temperament. Meantime, one aspect 
of sudden death there is, one modification, upon which no 

lo doubt can arise, that of all martyrdoms it is the most agi- 
tating — viz., where it surprises a man under circumstances 
which offer (or which seem to offer) some hurrying, flying, 
inappreciably minute chance of evading it. Sudden as the 
danger which it affronts must be any effort by which such 

15 an evasion can be accomplished. Even that^ even the sick- 
ening necessity for hurrying in extremity where all hurry 
seems destined to be vain, — even that anguish is liable to 
a hideous exasperation in one particular case : viz., where 
the appeal is made not exclusively to the instinct of self- 

20 preservation, but to the conscience, on behalf of some other 
life besides your own, accidentally thrown upon your pro- 
tection. To fail, to collapse in a service merely your own, 
might seem comparatively venial ; though, in fact, it is far 
from venial. But to fail in a case where Providence has 

25 suddenly thrown into your hands the final interests of 
another, — a fellow-creature shuddering between the gates 
of life and death : this, to a man of apprehensive conscience, 
would mingle the misery of an atrocious criminality with 
the misery of a bloody calamity. You are^called upon, by 

30 the case supposed, possibly to die, but to die at the very 
moment when, by any even partial failure or effeminate 
collapse of your energies, you will be self-denounced as a 
murderer. You had but the twinkling of an eye for your 
effort, and that effort might have been unavailing ; but to 



THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH 37 

have risen to the level of such an effort would have rescued 
you, though not from dying, yet from dying as a traitor to 
your final and farewell duty. 

The situation here contemplated exposes a dreadful ulcer, 
lurking far down in the depths of human nature. It is not 5 
that men generally are summoned to face such awful trials. 
But potentially, and in shadowy outline, such a trial is mov- 
ing subterraneously in perhaps all men's natures. Upon the 
secret mirror of our dreams such a trial is darkly projected, 
perhaps, to every one of us. That dream, so familiar to 10 
childhood, of meeting a lion, and, through languishing pros- 
tration in hope and the energies of hope, that constant sequel 
of lying down before the lion publishes the secret frailty of 
human nature — reveals its deep-seated falsehood to itself — 
records its abysmal treachery. Perhaps not one of us escapes 15 
that dream ; perhaps, as by some sorrowful doom of man, 
that dream repeats for every one of us, through every gen- 
eration, the original temptation in Eden. Every one of us, 
in this dream, has a bait offered to the infirm places of his 
own individual will ; once again a snare is presented for 20 
tempting him into captivity to a luxury of ruin ; once again, 
as in aboriginal Paradise, the man falls by his own choice ; 
again, by infinite iteration, the ancient earth groans to 
Heaven, through her secret caves, over the weakness of her 
child. " Nature, from her seat, sighing through all her 25 
works," again " gives signs of woe that all is lost '^ ; and again 
the counter-sigh is repeated to the sorrowing heavens for the 
endless rebellion against God. It is not without probability 
that in the world of dreams every one of us ratifies for him- 
self the original transgression. In dreams, perhaps under 30 
some secret conflict of the midnight sleeper, lighted up to the 
consciousness at the time, but darkened to the memory as 
soon. as all is finished, each several child of our mysterious 
race completes for himself the treason of the aboriginal fall. 



;^S SELECT/OATS FROM DE QUINCE Y 

The incident, so memorable in itself by its features of 
horror, and so scenical by its grouping for the eye, which 
furnished the text for this reverie upon Sudden Death 
occurred to myself in the dead of night, as a solitary spec- 
5 tator, when seated on the box of the Manchester and Glas- 
gow mail, in the second or third summer after Waterloo. I 
find it necessary to relate the circumstances, because they 
are such as could not have occurred unless under a singular 
combination of accidents. In those days, the oblique and 
10 lateral communications with many rural post-offices were so 
arranged, either through necessity or through defect of sys- 
tem, as to make it requisite for the main north-western mail 
(/.^., the down mail) on reaching Manchester to halt for a 
number of hours; how many, I do not remember; six or 
IS seven, I think; but the result was that, in the ordinary 
course, the mail recommenced its journey northwards about 
midnight. Wearied with the long detention at a gloomy 
hotel, I walked out about eleven o'clock at night for the 
sake of fresh air; meaning to fall in with the mail and 
20 resume my seat at the post-office. The night, however, 
being yet dark, as the moon had scarcely risen, and the 
streets being at that hour empty, so as to offer no oppor- 
tunities for asking the road, I lost my way, and did not 
reach the post-office until it was considerably past mid- 
25 night; but, to my great relief (as it was important for me 
to be in Westmoreland by the morning), I saw in the huge 
saucer eyes of the mail, blazing through the gloom, an evi- 
dence that my chance was not yet lost. Past the time it 
was; but, by some rare accident, the mail was not even 
30 yet ready to start. I ascended to my seat on the box, 
where my cloak was still lying as it had lain at the Bridge- 
water Arms. I had left it there in imitation of a nautical 
discoverer, who leaves a bit of bunting on the shore of 
his discovery, by way of warning off the ground the whole 



THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH 39 

human race, and notifying to the Christian and the heathen 
worlds, with his best compliments, that he has hoisted his 
pocket-handkerchief once and for ever upon that virgin 
soil : thenceforward claiming the jus dominii to the top of 
the atmosphere above it, and also the right of driving 5 
shafts to the centre of the earth below it; so that all 
people found after this warning either aloft in upper cham- 
bers of the atmosphere, or groping in subterraneous shafts, 
or squatting audaciously on the surface of the soil, will be 
treated as trespassers — kicked, that is to say, or decap- 10 
itated, as circumstances may suggest, by their very faithful 
servant, the owner of the said pocket-handkerchief. In the 
present case, it is probable that my cloak might not have 
been respected, and the jus gentium might have been cruelly 
violated in my person — for, in the dark, people commit 15 
deeds of darkness, gas being a great ally of morality ; but 
it so happened that on this night there was no other out- 
side passenger; and thus the crime, which else was but 
too probable, missed fire for want of a criminal. 

Having mounted the box, I took a small quantity of 20 
laudanum, having already travelled two hundred and fifty 
miles — viz., from a point seventy miles beyond London. In 
the taking of laudanum there was nothing extraordinary. 
But by accident it drew upon me the special attention of my 
assessor on the box, the coachman. And in that also there 25 
was nothing extraordinary. But by accident, and with great 
delight, it drew my own attention to the fact that this 
coachman was a monster in point of bulk, and that he had 
but one eye. In fact, he had been foretold by Virgil as 

" Monstrum horrendum, informe, ingens, cui lumen ademptum." 30 

He answered to the conditions in every one of the items: 
— I, a monster he was ; 2, dreadful ; 3, shapeless ; 4, huge; 
5, who had lost an eye. But why should that delight me ? 



40 SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCE Y 

Had he been one of the Calendars in the ** Arabian Nights," 
and had paid down his eye as the price of his criminal curi- 
osity, what right had / to exult in his misfortune ? I did 
not exult ; I delighted in no man's punishment, though it 
5 were even merited. But these personal distinctions (Nos. i, 
2, 3, 4, 5) identified in an instant an old friend of mine 
whom I had known in the south for some years as the most 
masterly of mail-coachmen. He was the man in all Europe 
that could (if any could) have driven six-in-hand full gallop 

10 over Al Sirat — that dreadful bridge of Mahomet, with no 
side battlements, and of extra room not enough for a razor's 
edge — leading right across the bottomless gulf. Under 
this eminent man, whom in Greek I cognominated Cyclops 
Diphrelates (Cyclops the Charioteer), I, and others known 

15 to me, studied the diphrelatic art. Excuse, reader, a word 
too elegant to be pedantic. As a pupil, though I paid extra 
fees, it is to be lamented that I did not stand high in his 
esteem. It showed his dogged honesty (though, observe, 
not his discernment) that he could not see my merits. Let 

20 us excuse his absurdity in this particular by remembering 
his want of an eye. Doubtless that made him blind to my 
merits. In the art of conversation, however, he admitted 
that I had the whip-hand of him. On the present occasion 
great joy was at our meeting. But what was Cyclops doing 

25 here ? Had the medical men recommended northern air, 
or how ? I collected, from such explanations as he volun- 
teered, that he had an interest at stake in some suit-at-law 
now pending at Lancaster ; so that probably he had got 
himself transferred to this station for the purpose of con- 

30 necting with his professional pursuits an instant readiness 
for the calls of his lawsuit. 

Meantime, what are we stopping for ? Surely we have 
now waited long enough. Oh, this procrastinating mail, and 
this procrastinating post-office ! Can't they take a lesson 



THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH 41 

upon that subject from me ? Some people have called me 
procrastinating. Yet you are witness, reader, that I was 
here kept waiting for the post-office. Will the post-office lay 
its hand on its heart, in its moments of sobriety, and assert 
that ever it waited for me ? What are they about ? The 5 
guard tells me that there is a large extra accumulation of 
foreign mails this night, owing to irregularities caused by 
war, by wind, by weather, in the packet service, which as 
yet does not benefit at all by steam. For an extra hour, it 
seems, the post-office has been engaged in threshing out the 10 
pure wheaten correspondence of Glasgow, and winnowing 
it from the chaff of all baser intermediate towns. But at 
last all is finished. Sound your horn, guard ! Manchester, 
good-bye ! we've lost an hour by your criminal conduct at 
the post-office: which, however, though I do not mean to 15 
part with a serviceable ground of complaint, and one which 
really is such for the horses, to me secretly is an advantage, 
since it compels us to look sharply for this lost hour 
amongst the next eight or nine, and to recover i^ (if we 
can) at the rate of one mile extra per hour. Off we are at 20 
last, and at eleven miles an hour ; and for the moment I 
detect no changes in the energy or in the skill of Cyclops. 

From Manchester to Kendal, which virtually (though not 
in law) is the capital of Westmoreland, there were at this 
time seven stages of eleven miles each. The first five of 25 
these, counting from Manchester, terminate in Lancaster ; 
which is therefore fifty-five miles north of Manchester, and 
the same distance exactly from Liverpool. The first three 
stages terminate in Preston (called, by way of distinction 
from other towns of that name. Proud Preston ) ; at which 30 
place it is that the separate roads from Liverpool and from 
Manchester to the north become confluent.^ Within these 

"^^^ Conjluenf^ : — Suppose a capital Y (the Pythagorean letter); 
Lancaster is at the foot of this letter; Liverpool at the top of the 



42 SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCE Y 

first three stages lay the foundation, the progress, and termi- 
nation of our night's adventure. During the first stage, I 
found out that Cyclops was mortal : he was liable to the 
shocking affection of sleep — a thing which previously I had 
5 never suspected. If a man indulges in the vicious habit of 
sleeping, all the skill in aurigation of Apollo himself, with 
the horses of Aurora to execute his notions, avails him noth- 
ing. "Oh, Cyclops!" I exclaimed, " thou art mortal. My 
friend, thou snorest." Through the first eleven miles, how- 

10 ever, this infirmity — which I grieve to say that he shared 
with the whole Pagan Pantheon — betrayed itself only by 
brief snatches. On waking up, he made an apology for 
himself which, instead of mending matters, laid open a 
gloomy vista of coming disasters. The summer assizes, he 

IS reminded me, were now going on at Lancaster: in conse- 
quence of which for three nights and three days he had 
not lain down on a bed. During the day he was waiting 
for his own summons as a witness on the trial in which 
he was interested, or else, lest he should be missing at the 

2o critical moment, was drinking with the other witnesses 
under the pastoral surveillance of the attorneys. During 
the night, or that part of it which at sea would form the 
middle watch, he was driving. This explanation certainly 
accounted for his drowsiness, but in a way which made it 

25 much more alarming ; since now, after several days' resist- 
ance to this infirmity, at length he was steadily giving way. 
Throughout the second stage he grew more and more 
drowsy. In the second mile of the third stage he sur- 
rendered himself finally and without a struggle to his 

right branch; Manchester at the top oi the /e/t; Proud Preston at 
the centre, where the two branches unite. It is thirty-three miles 
along either of the two branches ; it is twenty-two miles along the 
stem, — viz., from Preston in the middle to Lancaster at the root. 
There's a lesson in geography for the reader I 



THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH 43 

perilous temptation. All his past resistance had but deepened 
the weight of this final oppression. Seven atmospheres of 
sleep rested upon him ; and, to consummate the case, our 
worthy guard, after singing " Love amongst the Roses *' 
for perhaps thirty times, without invitation and without 5 
applause, had in revenge moodily resigned himself to 
slumber — not so deep, doubtless, as the coachman's, but 
deep enough for mischief. And thus at last, about ten 
miles from Preston, it came about that I found myself left 
in charge of his Majesty's London and Glasgow mail, then 10 
running at the least twelve miles an hour. 

What made this negligence less criminal than else it must 
have been thought was the condition of the roads at night 
during the assizes. At that time, all the law business of 
populous Liverpool, and also of populous Manchester, with 15 
its vast cincture of populous rural districts, was called up 
by ancient usage to the tribunal of Lilliputian Lancaster. 
To break up this old traditional usage required, i, a 
conflict with powerful established interests, 2, a large sys- 
tem of new arrangements, and 3, a new parliamentary 20 
statute. But as yet this change was merely in contem- 
plation. As things were at present, twice in the year^ so 
vast a body of business rolled northwards from the south- 
ern quarter of the county that for a fortnight at least it 
occupied the severe exertions of two judges in its despatch. 25 
The consequence of this was that every horse available for 
such a service, along the whole line of road, was exhausted 
in carrying down the multitudes of people who were parties 
to the different suits. By sunset, therefore, it usually hap- 
pened that, through utter exhaustion amongst men and 30 
horses, the road sank into profound silence. Except the 

1** Twice in the year^\' — There were at that time only two assizes 
even in the most populous counties — viz., the Lent Assizes and the 
Summer Assizes. 



44 SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCE Y 

exhaustion in the vast adjacent county of York from a 
contested election, no such silence succeeding to no such 
fiery uproar was ever witnessed in England. 

On this occasion the usual silence and solitude prevailed 
5 along the road. Not a hoof nor a wheel was to be heard. 
And, to strengthen this false luxurious confidence in the 
noiseless roads, it happened also that the night was one of 
peculiar solemnity and peace. For my own part, though 
slightly alive to the possibilities of peril, I had so far 

10 yielded to the influence of the mighty calm as to sink 
into a profound reverie. The month was August ; in the 
middle of which lay my own b'irthday — a festival to every 
thoughtful man suggesting solemn and often sigh-born^ 
thoughts. The county was my own native county — 

15 upon which, in its southern section, more than upon any 
equal area known to man past or present, had descended 
the original curse of labour in its heaviest form, not master- 
ing the bodies only of men, as of slaves, or criminals in 
mines, but working through the fiery will. Upon no equal 

20 space of earth was, or ever had been, the same energy of 
human power put forth daily. At this particular season 
also of the assizes, that dreadful hurricane of flight and 
pursuit, as it might have seemed to a stranger, which swept 
to and from Lancaster all day long, hunting the county 

25 up and down, and regularly subsiding back into silence 
about sunset, could not fail (when united with this perma- 
nent distinction of Lancashire as the very metropolis and 
citadel of labour) to point the thoughts pathetically upon 
that counter-vision of rest, of saintly repose from strife and 

30 sorrow, towards which, as to their secret haven, the pro- 
founder aspirations of man's heart are in solitude continually 

^ " Sigh-born " ; — I owe the suggestion of this word to an obscure 
remembrance of a beautiful phrase in " Giraldus Cambrensis " — viz., 
suspiriosce cogitationes. 



THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH 45 

travelling. Obliquely upon our left we were nearing the 
sea ; which also must, under the present circumstances, be 
repeating the general state of halcyon repose. The sea, 
the atmosphere, the light, bore each an orchestral part in 
this universal lull. Moonlight and the first timid trem- 5 
blings of the dawn were by this time blending ; and the 
blendings were brought into a still more exquisite state of 
unity by a slight silvery mist, motionless and dreamy, that 
covered the woods and fields, but with a veil of equable 
transparency. Except the feet of our own horses, — which, 10 
running on a sandy margin of the road, made but little 
disturbance, — there was no sound abroad. In the clouds 
and on the earth prevailed the same majestic peace ; and, 
in spite of all that the villain of a schoolmaster has done for 
the ruin of our sublimer thoughts, which are the thoughts 15 
of our infancy, we still believe in no such nonsense as a 
limited atmosphere. Whatever we may swear with our false 
feigning lips, in our faithful hearts we still believe, and must 
for ever believe, in fields of air traversing the total gulf 
between earth and the central heavens. Still, in the con- 20 
fidence of children that tread without fear every chamber 
in their father's house, and to whom no door is closed, we, 
in that Sabbatic vision which sometimes is revealed for 
an hour upon nights like this, ascend with easy steps from 
the sorrow-stricken fields of earth upwards to the sandals 25 
of God. 

Suddenly, from thoughts like these I was awakened to a 
sullen sound, as of some motion on the distant road. It 
stole upon the air for a moment; I listened in awe; but 
then it died away. Once roused, however, I could not but 30 
observe with alarm the quickened motion of our horses. 
Ten years' experience had made my eye learned in the 
valuing of motion ; and I saw that we were now running 
thirteen miles an hour. I pretend to no presence of mind. 



46 SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCEY 

On the contrary, my fear is that I am miserably and shame- 
fully deficient in that quality as regards action. The palsy 
of doubt and distraction hangs like some guilty weight of 
dark unfathomed remembrances upon my energies when 
5 the signal is flying for action. But, on the other hand, this 
accursed gift I have, as regards thought^ that in the first 
step towards the possibility of a misfortune I see its total 
evolution ; in the radix of the series I see too certainly 
and too instantly its entire expansion ; in the first syllable 

10 of the dreadful sentence I read already the last. It was 
not that I feared for ourselves. Us our bulk and impetus 
charmed against peril in any collision. And I had ridden 
through too many hundreds of perils that were frightful to 
approach, that were matter of laughter to look back upon, 

15 the first face of which was horror, the parting face a jest — 
for any anxiety to rest upon our interests. The mail was 
not built, I felt assured, nor bespoke, that could betray me 
who trusted to its protection. But any carriage that we 
could meet would be frail and light in comparison of our- 

20 selves. And I remarked this ominous accident of our 
situation, — we were on the wrong side of the road. But 
then, it may be said, the other party, if other there was, 
might also be on the wrong side ; and two wrongs might 
make a right. That was not likely. The same motive which 

25 had drawn tis to the right-hand side of the road — viz., the 
luxury of the soft beaten sand as contrasted with the paved 
centre — would prove attractive to others. The two adverse^ 
carriages would therefore, to a certainty, be travelling on 
the same side ; and from this side, as not being ours in 

30 law, the crossing over to the other would, of course, be 
looked for from us} Our lamps, still lighted, would give 

1 It is true that, according to the law of the case as established by 
legal precedents, all carriages were required to give way before royal 
equipages, and therefore before the mail as one of them. But this 



THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH 47 

the impression of vigilance on our part. And every crea- 
ture that met us would rely upon 21s for quartering.^ All 
this, and if the separate links of the anticipation had been 
a thousand times more, I saw, not discursively, or by effort, 
or by succession, but by one flash of horrid simultaneous 5 
intuition. 

Under this steady though rapid anticipation of the evil 
which Diight be gathering ahead, ah ! what a sullen mystery 
of fear, what a sigh of woe, was that which stole upon the 
air, as again the far-off sound of a wheel was heard ! A 10 
whisper it was — a whisper from, perhaps, four miles off — 
secretly announcing a ruin that, being foreseen, was not the 
less inevitable ; that, being known, was not therefore healed. 
What could be done — who was it that could do it — to check 
the storm-flight of these maniacal horses? Could I not 15 
seize the reins from the grasp of the slumbering coachman ? 
You, reader, think that it would have been in your power to 
do so. And I quarrel not with your estimate of yourself. 
But, from the way in which the coachman's hand was viced 
between his upper and lower thigh, this was impossible. 20 
Easy was it ? See, then, that bronze equestrian statue. The 
cruel rider has kept the bit in his horse's mouth for two cen- 
turies. Unbridle him for a minute, if you please, and wash 
his mouth with water. Easy was it ? Unhorse me, then, 
that imperial rider; knock me those marble feet from those 25 
marble stirrups of Charlemagne. 

The sounds ahead strengthened, and were now too clearly 
the sounds of wheels. Who and what could it be ? Was it 
industry in a taxed cart ? Was it youthful gaiety in a gig ? 

only increased the danger, as being a regulation very imperfectly made 
known, very unequally enforced, and therefore often embarrassing the 
movements on both sides. 

1 ** Quartering'''' : — This is the technical word, and, I presume, derived 
from the French cartayery to evade a rut or any obstacle. 



48 SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCE Y 

Was it sorrow that loitered, or joy that raced ? For as yet 
the snatches of sound were too intermitting, from distance, 
to decipher the character of the motion. Whoever were the 
travellers, something must be done to warn them. Upon 
5 the other party rests the active responsibility, but upon us 
— and, woe is me ! that us was reduced to my frail opium- 
shattered self — rests the responsibility of warning. Yet, 
how should this be accomplished ? Might I not sound the 
guard's horn ? Already, on the first thought, I was making 

lo my way over the roof of the guard's seat. But this, from 
the accident which I have mentioned, of the foreign mails 
being piled upon the roof, was a difficult and even danger- 
ous attempt to one cramped by nearly three hundred miles 
of outside travelling. And, fortunately, before I had lost 

15 much time in the attempt, our frantic horses swept round 
an angle of the road which opened upon us that final stage 
where the collision must be accomplished and the catas- 
trophe sealed. All was apparently finished. The court was 
sitting ; the case was heard ; the judge had finished ; and 

20 only the verdict was yet in arrear. 

Before us lay an avenue straight as an arrow, six hundred 
yards, perhaps, in length ; and the umbrageous trees, which 
rose in a regular line from either side, meeting high over- 
head, gave to it the character of a cathedral aisle. These 

25 trees lent a deeper solemnity to the early light ; but there 
was still light enough to perceive, at the further end of this 
Gothic aisle, a frail reedy gig, in which were seated a young 
man, and by his side a young lady. Ah, young sir ! what 
are you about ? If it is requisite that you should whisper 

30 your communications to this young lady — though really I 
see nobody, at an hour and on a road so solitary, likely to 
overhear you — is it therefore requisite that you should 
carry your lips forward to hers ? The little carriage is 
creeping on at one mile an hour ; and the parties within it, 



THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH 49 

being thus tenderly engaged, are naturally bending down 
their heads. Between them and eternity, to all human 
calculation, there is but a minute and a half. Oh heavens ! 
what is it that I shall do ? Speaking or acting, what help 
can I offer 1 Strange it is, and to a mere auditor of the 5 
tale might seem laughable, that I should need a suggestion 
from the "Iliad" to prompt the sole resource that remained. 
Yet so it was. Suddenly I remembered the shout of Achilles, 
and its effect. But could I pretend to shout like the son of 
Peleus, aided by Pallas ? No : but then I needed not the 10 
shout that should alarm all Asia militant ; such a shout 
would suffice as might carry terror into the hearts of two 
thoughtless young people and one gig-horse. I shouted — 
and the young man heard me not. A second time I shouted 
— and now he heard me, for now he raised his head. 15 

Here, then, all had been done that, by me, could be done ; 
more on my part was not possible. Mine had been the first 
step ; the second was for the young man ; the third was for 
God. If, said I, this stranger is a brave man, and if indeed 
he loves the young girl at his side — or, loving her not, if 20 
he feels the obligation, pressing upon every man worthy to 
be called a man, of doing his utmost for a woman confided 
to his protection — he will at least make some effort to save 
her. If that fails, he will not perish the more, or by a death 
more cruel, for having made it ; and he will die as a brave 25 
man should, with his face to the danger, and with his arm 
about the woman that he sought in vain to save. But, if 
he makes no effort, — shrinking without a struggle from his 
duty, — he himself will not the less certainly perish for this 
baseness of poltroonery. He will die no less : and why not ? 30 
Wherefore should we grieve that there is one craven less in 
the world ? No ; let him perish, without a pitying thought 
of ours wasted upon him; and, in that case, all our grief 
will be reserved for the fate of the helpless girl who now, 



so SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCEY 

upon the least shadow of failure in him^ must by the fiercest 
of translations — must without time for a prayer — must 
within seventy seconds — stand before the judgment-seat 
of God. 
5 But craven he was not : sudden had been the call upon 
him, and sudden was his answer to the call. He saw, he 
heard, he comprehended, the ruin that was coming down : 
already its gloomy shadow darkened above him ; and already 
he was measuring his strength to deal with it. Ah ! what a 

10 vulgar thing does courage seem when we see nations buying 
it and selling it for a shilling a-day : ah ! what a sublime 
thing does courage seem when some fearful summons on 
the great deeps of life carries a man, as if running before a 
hurricane, up to the giddy crest of some tumultuous crisis 

15 from which lie two courses, and a voice says to him audibly, 
"One way lies hope; take the other, and mourn for ever!" 
How grand a triumph if, even then, amidst the raving of all 
around him, and the frenzy of the danger, the man is able to 
confront his situation — is able to retire for a moment into 

20 solitude with God, and to seek his counsel from Him I 

For seven seconds, it might be, of his seventy, the stranger 
settled his countenance steadfastly upon us, as if to search 
and value every element in the conflict before him. For 
five seconds more of his seventy he sat immovably, like one 

25 that mused on some great purpose. For five more, perhaps, 
he sat with eyes upraised, like one that prayed in sorrow, 
under some extremity of doubt, for light that should guide 
him to the better choice. Then suddenly he rose ; stood 
upright ; and, by a powerful strain upon the reins, raising 

30 his horse's fore-feet from the ground, he slewed him round 
on the pivot of his hind-legs, so as to plant the little equi- 
page in a position nearly at right angles to ours. Thus far 
his condition was not improved ; except as a first step had 
been taken towards the possibility of a second. If no more 



THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH 51 

were done, nothing was done ; for the little carriage still 
occupied the very centre of our path, though in an altered 
direction. Yet even now it may not be too late : fifteen 
of the seventy seconds may still be unexhausted ; and one 
almighty bound may avail to clear the ground. Hurry, 5 
then, hurry! for the flying moments — they hurry. Oh, 
hurry, hurry, my brave young man ! for the cruel hoofs of 
our horses — they also hurry ! Fast are the flying moments, 
faster are the hoofs of our horses. But fear not for him^ 
if human energy can suffice ; faithful was he that drove to 10 
his terrific duty ; faithful was the horse to his command. 
One blow, one impulse given with voice and hand, by the 
stranger, one rush from the horse, one bound as if in the 
act of rising to a fence, landed the docile creature's fore- 
feet upon the crown or arching centre of the road. The 15 
larger half of the little equipage had then cleared our over- 
towering shadow : that was evident even to my own agitated 
sight. But it mattered little that one wreck should float off 
in safety if upon the wreck that perished were embarked 
the human freightage. The rear part of the carriage — 20 
was that certainly beyond the line of absolute ruin ? What 
power could answer the question ? Glance of eye, thought 
of man, wing of angel, which of these had speed enough to 
sweep between the question and the answer, and divide the 
one from the other ? Light does not tread upon the steps 25 
of light more indivisibly than did our all-conquering arrival 
upon the escaping efforts of the gig. That must the young 
man have felt too plainly. His back was now turned to 
us ; not by sight could he any longer communicate with the 
peril ; but, by the dreadful rattle of our harness, too truly 30 
had his ear been instructed that all was finished as regarded 
any effort of his. Already in resignation he had rested 
from his struggle ; and perhaps in his heart he was whisper- 
ing, "Father, which art in heaven, do Thou finish above 



52 SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCE Y 

what I on earth have attempted." Faster than ever mill- 
race we ran past them in our inexorable flight. Oh, raving 
of hurricanes that must have sounded in their young ears 
at the moment of our transit ! Even in that moment the 
5 thunder of collision spoke aloud. Either with the swingle- 
bar, or with the haunch of our near leader, we had struck 
the off-wheel of the little gig ; which stood rather obliquely, 
and not quite so far advanced as to be accurately parallel 
with the near-wheel. The blow, from the fury of our pas- 

10 sage, resounded terrifically. I rose in horror, to gaze upon 
the ruins we might have caused. From my elevated station 
I looked down, and looked back upon the scene ; which in 
a moment told its own tale, and wrote all its records on 
my heart for ever. 

IS Here was the map of the passion that now had finished. 
The horse was planted immovably, with his fore-feet upon 
the paved crest of the central road. He of the whole party 
might be supposed untouched by the passion of death. The 
little cany carriage — partly, perhaps, from the violent tor- 

20 sion of the wheels in its recent movement, partly from the 
thundering blow we had given to it — as if it sympathised 
with human horror, was all alive with tremblings and shiver- 
ings. The young man trembled not, nor shivered. He sat 
like a rock. But his was the steadiness of agitation frozen 

25 into rest by horror. As yet he dared not to look round ; for 
he knew that, if anything remained to do, by him it could 
no longer be done. And as yet he knew not for certain if 

their safety were accomplished. But the lady 

But the lady ! Oh, heavens ! will that spectacle ever 

30 depart from my dreams, as she rose and sank upon her seat, 
sank and rose, threw up her arms wildly to heaven, clutched 
at some visionary object in the air, fainting, praying, raving, 
despairing ? Figure to yourself, reader, the elements of the 
case ; suffer me to recall before your mind the circumstances 



THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH S3 

of that unparalleled situation. From the silence and deep 
peace of this saintly summer night — from the pathetic 
blending of this sweet moonlight, dawnlight, dreamlight — 
from the manly tenderness of this flattering, whispering, 
murmuring love — suddenly as from the woods and fields 5 
— suddenly as from the chambers of the air opening in 
revelation — suddenly as from the ground yawning at her 
feet, leaped upon her, with the flashing of cataracts. Death 
the crowned phantom, with all the equipage of his terrors, 
and the tiger roar of his voice. 10 

The moments were numbered ; the strife was finished ; 
the vision was closed. In the twinkling of an eye, our 
flying horses had carried us to the termination of the 
umbrageous aisle ; at the right angles we wheeled into our 
former direction; the turn of the road carried the scene 15 
out of my eyes in an instant, and swept it into my dreams 
for ever. 

Section III — Dream-Fugue: 

FOUNDED ON THE PRECEDING THEME OF SUDDEN DEATH 

" Whence the sound 
Of instruments, that made melodious chime, 
Was heard, of harp and organ ; and who moved 20 

Their stops and chords was seen ; his volant touch 
Instinct through all proportions, low and high. 
Fled and pursued transverse the resonant fugue." 

Par. Lost, Bk. XI. 

Tumultuosissimamente 

Passion of sudden death ! that once in youth I read and 
interpreted by the shadows of thy averted signs^ ! — rapture 25 

1 '■'' Averted sig7ts^^ : — I read the course and changes of the lady's 
agony in the succession of her involuntary gestures ; but it must be 
remembered that I read all this from the rear, never once catching the 
lady's full face, and even her profile imperfectly. 



54 SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCE Y 

of panic taking the shape (which amongst tombs in churches 
I have seen) of woman bursting her sepulchral bonds — of 
woman's Ionic form bending forward from the ruins of her 
grave with arching foot, with eyes upraised, with clasped 

5 adoring hands — waiting, watching, trembling, praying for 
the trumpet's call to rise from dust for ever ! Ah, vision 
too fearful of shuddering humanity on the brink of almighty 
abysses ! — vision that didst start back, that didst reel away, 
like a shrivelling scroll from before the wrath of fire racing 

lo on the wings of the wind ! Epilepsy so brief of horror, 
wherefore is it that thou canst not die ? Passing so sud- 
denly into darkness, wherefore is it that still thou shed- 
dest thy sad funeral blights upon the gorgeous mosaics of 
dreams ? Fragment of music too passionate, heard once, 

15 and heard no more, what aileth thee, that thy deep rolling 
chords come up at intervals through all the worlds of sleep, 
and after forty years have lost no element of horror ? 



Lo, it is summer — almighty summer ! The everlasting 
gates of life and summer are thrown open wide ; and on the 

20 ocean, tranquil and verdant as a savannah, the unknown 
lady from the dreadful vision and I myself are floating — 
she upon a fairy pinnace, and I upon an English three- 
decker. Both of us are wooing gales of festal happiness 
within the domain of our common country, within that 

25 ancient watery park, within the pathless chase of ocean, 
where England takes her pleasure as a huntress through 
winter and summer, from the rising to the setting sun. 
Ah, what a wilderness of floral beauty was hidden, or was 
suddenly revealed, upon the tropic islands through which 

30 the pinnace moved ! And upon her deck what a bevy of 
human flowers : young women how lovely, young men how 



THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH 



55 



noble, that were dancing together, and slowly drifting 
towards us amidst music and incense, amidst blossoms 
from forests and gorgeous corymbi from vintages, amidst 
natural carolling, and the echoes of sweet girlish laughter. 
Slowly the pinnace nears us, gaily she hails us, and silently 5 
she disappears beneath the shadow of our mighty bows. 
But then, as at some signal from heaven, the music, and 
the carols, and the sweet echoing of girlish laughter — all 
are hushed. What evil has smitten the pinnace, meeting 
or overtasking her ? Did ruin to our friends couch within 10 
our own dreadful shadow ? Was our shadow the shadow 
of death ? I looked over the bow for an answer, and, 
behold ! the pinnace was dismantled ; the revel and the 
revellers were found no more ; the glory of the vintage was 
dust ; and the forests with their beauty were left without a 15 
witness upon the seas. "But where," and I turned to our 
crew — "where are the lovely women that danced beneath 
the awning of flowers and clustering corymbi ? Whither 
have fled the noble young men that danced ^\\h. theniV^ 
Answer there was none. But suddenly the man at the 20 
mast-head, whose countenance darkened with alarm, cried 
out, " Sail on the weather beam ! Down she comes upon 
us : in seventy seconds she also will founder." 

II 

I looked to the weather side, and the summer had 
departed. The sea was rocking, and shaken with gather- 25 
ing wrath. Upon its surface sat mighty mists, which 
grouped themselves into arches and long cathedral aisles. 
Down one of these, with the fiery pace of a quarrel from a 
cross-bow, ran a frigate right athwart our course. "Are 
they mad ? " some voice exclaimed from our deck. "Do 30 
they woo their ruin ? " But in a moment, as she was close 



56 SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCE Y 

upon us, some impulse of a heady current or local vortex 
gave a wheeling bias to her course, and off she forged with- 
out a shock. As she ran past us, high aloft amongst the 
shrouds stood the lady of the pinnace. The deeps opened 

5 ahead in malice to receive her, towering surges of foam 
ran after her, the billows were fierce to catch her. But 
far away she was borne into desert spaces of the sea: 
whilst still by sight I followed her, as she ran before the 
howling gale, chased by angry sea-birds and by madden- 

10 ing billows ; still I saw her, as at the moment when she 
ran past us, standing amongst the shrouds, with her white 
draperies streaming before the wind. There she stood, 
with hair dishevelled, one hand clutched amongst the tack- 
ling — rising, sinking, fluttering, trembling, praying; there 

15 for leagues I saw her as she stood, raising at intervals one 
hand to heaven, amidst the fiery crests of the pursuing 
waves and the raving of the storm ; until at last, upon a 
sound from afar of malicious laughter and mockery, all 
was hidden for ever in driving showers ; and afterwards, 

20 but when I knew not, nor how, 



III 

Sweet funeral bells from some incalculable distance, wail- 
ing over the dead that die before the dawn, awakened me 
as I slept in a boat moored to some familiar shore. The 
morning twilight even then was breaking ; and, by the 

25 dusky revelations which it spread, I saw a girl, adorned 
with a garland of white roses about her head for some 
great festival, running along the solitary strand in extrem- 
ity of haste. Her running was the running of panic ; and 
often she looked back as to some dreadful enemy in the 

30 rear. But, when I leaped ashore, and followed on her steps 
to warn her of a peril in front, alas ! from me she fled as 



THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH 57 

from another peril, and vainly I shouted to her of quick- 
sands that lay ahead. Faster and faster she ran ; round a 
promontory of rocks she wheeled out of sight ; in an instant 
I also wheeled round it, but only to see the treacherous 
sands gathering above her head. Already her person was 5 
buried ; only the fair young head and the diadem of white 
roses around it were still visible to the pitying heavens ; 
and, last of all, was visible one white marble arm. I saw 
by the early twilight this fair young head, as it was sinking 
down to darkness — saw this marble arm, as it rose above 10 
her head and her treacherous grave, tossing, faltering, ris- 
ing, clutching, as at some false deceiving hand stretched 
out from the clouds — saw this marble arm uttering her 
dying hope, and then uttering her dying despair. The 
head, the diadem, the arm — these all had sunk; at last 15 
over these also the cruel quicksand had closed ; and no 
memorial of the fair young girl remained on earth, except 
my own solitary tears, and the funeral bells from the desert 
seas, that, rising again more softly, sang a requiem over 
the grave of the buried child, and over her blighted dawn. 20 

I sat, and wept in secret the tears that men have ever 
given to the memory of those that died before the dawn, 
and by the treachery of earth, our mother. But suddenly 
the tears and funeral bells were hushed by a shout as of 
many nations, and by a roar as from some great king's 25 
artillery, advancing rapidly along the valleys, and heard 
afar by echoes from the mountains. " Hush ! " I said, as I 
bent my ear earthwards to listen — "hush! — this either is 
the very anarchy of strife, or else " — and then I listened 
more profoundly, and whispered as I raised my head — 30 
"or else, oh heavens! it is victory that is final, victory that 
swallows up all strife. '' 



58 SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCE Y 

IV 

Immediately, in trance, I was carried over land and sea 
to some distant kingdom, and placed upon a triumphal car, 
amongst companions crowned with laurel. The darkness 
of gathering midnight, brooding over all the land, hid from 
5 us the mighty crowds that were weaving restlessly about 
ourselves as a centre : we heard them, but saw them not. 
Tidings had arrived, within an hour, of a grandeur that 
measured itself against centuries ; too full of pathos they 
were, too full of joy, to utter themselves by other language 

10 than by tears, by restless anthems, and Te Deums reverber- 
ated from the choirs and orchestras of earth. These tid- 
ings we that sat upon the laurelled car had it for our 
privilege to publish amongst all nations. And already, 
by signs audible through the darkness, by snortings and 

15 tramplings, our angry horses, that knew no fear or fleshly 
weariness, upbraided us with delay. Wherefore was it that 
we delayed ? We waited for a secret word, that should 
bear witness to the hope of nations as now accomplished 
for ever. At midnight the secret word arrived ; which 

20 word was — Waterloo and Recovered Christendom ! The 
dreadful word shone by its own light ; before us it went ; 
high above our leaders' heads it rode, and spread a golden 
light over the paths which we traversed. Every city, at 
the presence of the secret word, threw open its gates. The 

25 rivers were conscious as we crossed. All the forests, as we 
ran along their margins, shivered in homage to the secret 
word. And the darkness comprehended it. 

Two hours after midnight we approached a mighty 
Minster. Its gates, which rose to the clouds, were closed. 

30 But, when the dreadful word that rode before us reached 
them with its golden light, silently they moved back upon 
their hinges ; and at a flying gallop our equipage entered 



THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH 59 

the grand aisle of the cathedral. Headlong was our pace ; 
and at every altar, in the little chapels and oratories to the 
right hand and left of our course, the lamps, dying or sick- 
ening, kindled anew in sympathy with the secret word that 
was flying past. Forty leagues we might have run in the 5 
cathedral, and as yet no strength of morning light had 
reached us, when before us we saw the aerial galleries 
of organ and choir. Every pinnacle of fretwork, every 
station of advantage amongst the traceries, was crested 
by white-robed choristers that sang deliverance; that wept 10 
no more tears, as once their fathers had wept; but at 
intervals that sang together to the generations, saying, 

'^ Chant the deliverer's praise in every tongue," 

and receiving answers from afar, 

" Such as once in heaven and earth were sung." 15 

And of their chanting was no end ; of our headlong pace 
was neither pause nor slackening. 

Thus as we ran like torrents — thus as we swept with 
bridal rapture over the Campo Santo ^ of the cathedral 
graves — suddenly we became aware of a vast necropolis 20 
rising upon the far-off horizon — a city of sepulchres, built 
within the saintly cathedral for the warrior dead that 

1 " Campo Santo " ; — It is probable that most of my readers will 
be acquainted with the history of the Campo Santo (or cemetery) at 
Pisa, composed of earth brought from Jerusalem from a bed of sanc- 
tity as the highest prize which the noble piety of crusaders could 
ask or imagine. To readers who are unacquainted with England, or 
who (being English) are yet unacquainted with the cathedral cities of 
England, it may be right to mention that the graves within-side the 
cathedrals often form a flat pavement over which carriages and horses 
might run ; and perhaps a boyish remembrance of one particular cathe- 
dral, across which I had seen passengers walk and burdens carried, as 
about two centuries back they were through the middle of St. Paul's 
in London, may have assisted my dream. ^ 



6o SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCE Y 

rested from their feuds on earth. Of purple granite was 
the necropolis ; yet, in the first minute, it lay like a purple 
stain upon the horizon, so mighty was the distance. In 
the second minute it trembled through many changes, 
5 growing into terraces and towers of wondrous altitude, 
so mighty was the pace. In the third minute already, with 
our dreadful gallop, we were entering its suburbs. Vast 
sarcophagi rose on every side, having towers and turrets 
that, upon the limits of the central aisle, strode forward 

lo with haughty intrusion, that ran back with mighty shad- 
ows into answering recesses. Every sarcophagus showed 
many bas-reliefs — bas-reliefs of battles and of battle-fields; 
battles from forgotten ages, battles from yesterday ; battle- 
fields that, long since, nature had healed and reconciled to 

15 herself with the sweet oblivion of flowers; battle-fields that 
were yet angry and crimson with carnage. Where the 
terraces ran, there did we run ; where the towers curved, 
there did we curve. With the flight of swallows our horses 
swept round every angle. Like rivers in flood wheeling 

20 round headlands, like hurricanes that ride into the secrets 
of forests, faster than ever light unwove the mazes of dark- 
ness, our flying equipage carried earthly passions, kindled 
warrior instincts, amongst the dust that lay around us — 
dust oftentimes of our noble fathers that had slept in God 

25 from Crecy to Trafalgar. And now had we reached the 
last sarcophagus, now were we abreast of the last bas-relief, 
already had we recovered the arrow-like flight of the illim- 
itable central aisle, when coming up this aisle to meet us 
we beheld afar off a female child, that rode in a carriage 

30 as frail as flowers. The mists which went before her hid 
the fawns that drew her, but could not hide the shells and 
tropic flowers with which she played — but could not hide 
the lovely smiles by which she uttered her trust in the 
mighty cathedral, and in the cherubim that looked down 



THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH 6i 

upon her from the mighty shafts of its pillars. Face to 
face she was meeting us; face to face she rode, as if danger 
there were none. ** Oh, baby ! '' I exclaimed, *^ shalt thou 
be the ransom for Waterloo ? Must we, that carry tidings 
of great joy to every people, be messengers of ruin to 5 
thee ! " In horror I rose at the thought ; but then also, in 
horror at the thought, rose one that was sculptured on a 
bas-relief — a Dying Trumpeter. Solemnly from the field 
of battle he rose to his feet ; and, unslinging his stony 
trumpet, carried it, in his dying anguish, to his stony lips 10 
— sounding once, and yet once again; proclamation that, 
in thy ears, oh baby ! spoke from the battlements of death. 
Immediately deep shadows fell between us, and aboriginal 
silence. The choir had ceased to sing. The hoofs of 
our horses, the dreadful rattle of our harness, the groan- 15 
ing of our wheels, alarmed the graves no more. By horror 
the bas-relief had been unlocked unto life. By horror we, 
that were so full of life, we men and our horses, with their 
fiery fore-legs rising in mid air to their everlasting gallop, 
were frozen to a bas-relief. Then a third time the trumpet 20 
sounded ; the seals were taken off all pulses ; life, and the 
frenzy of life, tore into their channels again ; again the 
choir burst forth in sunny grandeur, as from the muffling 
of storms and darkness ; again the thunderings of our 
horses carried temptation into the graves. One cry burst 25 
from our lips, as the clouds, drawing off from the aisle, 
showed it empty before us. — " Whither has the infant 
fled ? — is the young child caught up to God ? " Lo ! afar 
off, in a vast recess, rose three mighty windows to the 
clouds ; and on a level with their summits, at height 30 
insuperable to man, rose an altar of purest alabaster. 
On its eastern face was trembling a crimson glory. A 
glory was it from the reddening dawn that now streamed 
through the windows ? Was it from the crimson robes of 



62 SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCE Y 

the martyrs painted on the windows ? Was it from the 
bloody bas-reliefs of earth ? There, suddenly, within that 
crimson radiance, rose the apparition of a woman's head, 
and then of a woman's figure. The child it was — grown 
5 up to woman's height. Clinging to the horns of the altar, 
voiceless she stood — sinking, rising, raving, despairing ; 
and behind the volume of incense that, night and day, 
streamed upwards from the altar, dimly was seen the fiery 
font, and the shadow of that dreadful being who should 

lo have baptized her with the baptism of death. But by her 
side was kneeling her better angel, that hid his face with 
wings; that wept and pleaded for her; that prayed when 
she could not ; that fought with Heaven by tears for her 
deliverance; which also, as he raised his immortal counte- 

15 nance from his wings, I saw, by the glory in his eye, that 
from Heaven he had won at last. 



Then was completed the passion of the mighty fugue. 
The golden tubes of the organ, which as yet had but mut- 
tered at intervals — gleaming amongst clouds and surges 

20 of incense — threw up, as from fountains unfathomable, 
columns of heart-shattering music. Choir and anti-choir 
were filling fast with unknown voices. Thou also. Dying 
Trumpeter, with thy love that was victorious, and thy 
anguish that was finishing, didst enter the tumult; trum- 

25 pet and echo — farewell love, and farewell anguish — rang 
through the dreadful sanctus. Oh, darkness of the grave ! 
that from the crimson altar and from the fiery font wert 
visited and searched by the effulgence in the angel's eye — 
were these indeed thy children ? Pomps of life, that, from 

30 the burials of centuries, rose again to the voice of perfect 
joy, did ye indeed mingle with the festivals of Death ? Lo ! 



THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH 



63 



as I looked back for seventy leagues through the mighty 
cathedral, I saw the quick and the dead that sang together 
to God, together that sang to the generations of man. All 
the hosts of jubilation, like armies that ride in pursuit, 
moved with one step. Us, that, with laurelled heads, were 5 
passing from the cathedral, they overtook, and, as with a 
garment, they wrapped us round with thunders greater than 
our own. As brothers we moved together ; to the dawn 
that advanced, to the stars that fled ; rendering thanks to 
God in the highest — that, having hid His face through 10 
one generation behind thick clouds of War, once again 
was ascending, from the Campo Santo of Waterloo was 
ascending, in the visions of Peace ; rendering thanks for 
thee, young girl ! whom having overshadowed with His 
ineffable passion of death, suddenly did God relent, suffered 15 
thy angel to turn aside His arm, and even in thee, sister 
unknown ! shown to me for a moment only to be hidden 
for ever, found an occasion to glorify His goodness. A 
thousand times, amongst the phantoms of sleep, have I 
seen thee entering the gates of the golden dawn, with the 20 
secret word riding before thee, with the armies of the 
grave behind thee, — seen thee sinking, rising, raving, 
despairing ; a thousand times in the worlds of sleep have I 
seen thee followed by God^s angel through storms, through 
desert seas, through the darkness of quicksands, through 25 
dreams and the dreadful revelations that are in dreams ; 
only that at the last, with one sling of His victorious arm, 
He might snatch thee back from ruin, and might emblazon 
in thy deliverance the endless resurrections of His love ! 



JOAN OF ARC^ 

What is to be thought of her! What is to be thought of 
the poor shepherd girl from the hills and forests of Lor- 
raine, that — like the Hebrew shepherd boy from the hills 
and forests of Judea — rose suddenly out of the quiet, out 
5 of the safety, out of the religious inspiration, rooted in deep 
pastoral solitudes, to a station in the van of armies, and to 
the more perilous station at the right hand of kings ? The 
Hebrew boy inaugurated his patriotic mission by an act^ by 
a victorious act^ such as no man could deny. But so did 
lo the girl of Lorraine, if we read her story as it was read by 
those who saw her nearest. Adverse armies bore witness 

1 " Arc " ; — Modern France, that should know a great deal better 
than myself, insists that the name is not D'Arc — i.e., of Arc — but 
Dare. Now it happens sometimes that, if a person whose position 
guarantees his access to the best information will content himself with 
gloomy dogmatism, striking the table with his fist, and saying in a 
terrific voice, "It is so, and there's an end of it," one bows defer- 
entially, and submits. But, if, unhappily for himself, won by this 
docility, he relents too amiably' into reasons and arguments, probably 
one raises an insurrection against him that may never be crushed ; for 
in the fields of logic one can skirmish, perhaps, as well as he. Had he 
confined himself to dogmatism, he would have intrenched his position 
in darkness, and have hidden his own vulnerable points. But coming 
down to base reasons he lets in light, and one sees where to plant the 
blows. Now, the worshipful reason of modern France for disturb- 
ing the old received spelling is that Jean Hordal, a descendant of 
La Pucelle's brother, spelled the name Dare in 1612. But what of 
that? It is notorious that what small matter of spelling Providence 
had thought fit to disburse amongst man in the seventeenth century 
was all monopolised by printers ; now, M. Hordal was not a printer. 

64 



JOAN OF ARC 65 

to the boy as no pretender ; but so they did to the gentle 
girl. Judged by the voices of all who saw them from a 
station of good will, both were found true and loyal to any 
promises involved in their first acts. Enemies it was that 
made the difference between their subsequent fortunes. The 5 
boy rose to a splendour and a noonday prosperity, both 
personal and public, that rang through the records of his 
people, and became a byword among his posterity for a 
thousand years, until the sceptre was departing from Judah. 
The poor, forsaken girl, on the contrary, drank not herself 10 
from that cup of rest which she had secured for France. She 
never sang together with the songs that rose in her native 
Domremy as echoes to the departing steps of invaders. 
She mingled not in the festal dances at Vaucouleurs which 
celebrated in rapture the redemption of France. No! for 15 
her voice was then silent ; no ! for her feet were dust. 
Pure, innocent, noble-hearted girl ! whom, from earliest 
youth, ever I believed in as full of truth and self-sacrifice, 
this was amongst the strongest pledges for thy truth, that 
never once — no, not for a moment of weakness — didst 20 
thou. revel in the vision of coronets and honour from man. 
Coronets for thee ! Oh, no ! Honours, if they come when 
all is over, are for those that share thy blood.^ Daughter 
of Domremy, when the gratitude of thy king shall awaken, 
thou wilt be sleeping the sleep of the dead. Call her, King 25 
of France, but she will not hear thee. Cite her by the 
apparitors to come and receive a robe of honour, but she 
will be found en contumace. When the thunders of uni- 
versal France, as even yet may happen, shall proclaim the 
grandeur of the poor shepherd girl that gave up all for her 30 
country, thy ear, young shepherd girl, will have been deaf 
for five centuries. To suffer and to do, that was thy 

1" Those that share thy blood ^\' — A collateral relative of Joanna's 
was subsequently ennobled by the title of Du Lys. 



66 SELECTIONS FROM BE QUINCE Y 

portion in this life ; that was thy destiny ; and not for a 
moment was it hidden from thyself. Life, thou saidst, is 
short ; and the sleep which is in the grave is long ; let me 
use that life, so transitory, for the glory of those heavenly 
5 dreams destined to comfort the sleep which is so long ! 
This pure creature — pure from every suspicion of even a 
visionary self-interest, even as she was pure in senses more 
obvious — never once did this holy child, as regarded her- 
self, relax from her belief in the darkness that was travel- 

lo ling to meet her. She might not prefigure the very manner 
of her death ; she saw not in vision, perhaps, the aerial 
altitude of the fiery scaffold, the spectators without end, 
on every road, pouring into Rouen as to a coronation, the 
surging smoke, the volleying flames, the hostile faces all 

15 around, the pitying eye that lurked but here and there, 
until nature and imperishable truth broke loose from arti- 
ficial restraints — these might not be apparent through the 
mists of the hurrying future. But the voice that called 
her to death, that she heard for ever. 

20 Great was the throne of France even in those days, and 
great was He that sat upon it ; but well Joanna knew that 
riot the throne, nor he that sat upon it, was for her ; but, 
on the contrary, that she was for them; not she by them, 
but they by her, should rise from the dust. Gorgeous were 

25 the lilies of France, and for centuries had the privilege to 
spread their beauty over land and sea, until, in another 
century, the wrath of God and man combined to wither 
them ; but well Joanna knew, early at Domremy she had 
read that bitter truth, that the lilies of France would 

30 decorate no garland for her. Flower nor bud, bell nor 
blossom, would ever bloom for her/ 

But stay. What reason is there for taking up this sub- 
ject of Joanna precisely in the spring of 1847 .? Might it 



JOAN OF ARC 67 

not have been left till the spring of 1947, or, perhaps, left 
till called for ? Yes, but it is called for, and clamorously. 
You are aware, reader, that amongst the many original 
thinkers whom modern France has produced, one of the 
reputed leaders is M. Michelet. All these writers are of 5 
a revolutionary cast ; not in a political sense merely, but 
in all senses ; mad, oftentimes, as March hares ; crazy 
with the laughing gas of recovered liberty ; drunk with the 
wine cup of their mighty Revolution, snorting, whinnying, 
throwing up their heels, like wild horses in the boundless 10 
pampas, and running races of defiance with snipes, or with 
the winds, or with their own shadows, if they can find noth- 
ing else to challenge. Some time or other, I, that have 
leisure to read, may introduce you^ that have not, to two 
or three dozen of these writers; of whom I can assure 15 
you beforehand that they are often profound, and at inter- 
vals are even as impassioned as if they were come of our 
best English blood. But now, confining our attention to 
M. Michelet, we in England — who know him best by his 
worst book, the book against priests, etc. — know him dis- 20 
advantageously. That book is a rhapsody of incoherence. 
But his " History of France '' is quite another thing. A 
man, in whatsoever craft he sails, cannot stretch away out 
of sight when he is linked to the windings of the shore by 
towing-ropes of History. Facts, and the consequences 25 
of facts, draw the writer back to the falconer's lure from 
the giddiest heights of speculation. Here, therefore — in 
his *< France " — if not always free from flightiness, if now 
and then off like a rocket for an airy wheel in the clouds, 
M. Michelet, with natural politeness, never forgets that 30 
he has left a large audience waiting for him on earth, and 
gazing upward in anxiety for his return ; return, therefore, 
he does. But History, though clear of certain temptations 
in one direction, has separate dangers of its own. It is 



SS SELECTIONS FROM BE QUINCE Y 

impossible so to write a history of France, or of England 
— works becoming every hour more indispensable to the 
inevitably political man of this day — without perilous 
openings for error. If I, for instance, on the part of 
5 England, should happen to turn my labours into that 
channel, and (on the model of Lord Percy going to 
Chevy Chase) 

" A vow to God should make 

My pleasure in the Michelet woods 
10 Three summer days to take," 

probably, from simple delirium, I might hunt M. Michelet 
into delirium tremens. Two strong angels stand by the side 
of History, whether French history or English, as heraldic 
supporters : the angel of research on the left hand, that 

15 must read millions of dusty parchments, and of pages 
blotted with lies ; the angel of meditation on the right 
hand, that must cleanse these lying records with fire, even 
as of old the draperies of asbestos were cleansed, and must 
quicken them into regenerated life. Willingly I acknowl- 

20 edge that no man will ever avoid innumerable errors of 
detail ; with so vast a compass of ground to traverse, 
this is impossible ; but such errors (though I have a 
bushel on hand, at M. Michelet's service) are not the 
game I chase ; it is the bitter and unfair spirit in which 

25 M. Michelet writes against England. Even that^ after all, 
is but my secondary object ; the real one is Joanna, the 
Pucelle d'Orleans herself. 

I am not going to write the history of La Pucelle : to do 
this, or even circumstantially to report the history of her 

30 persecution and bitter death, of her struggle with false 
witnesses and with ensnaring judges, it would be neces- 
sary to have before us all the documents, and therefore 



JOAN OF ARC 69 

the collection only now forthcoming in Paris.^ But my 
purpose is narrower. There have been great thinkers, 
disdaining the careless judgments of contemporaries, who 
have thrown themselves boldly on the judgment of a far 
posterity, that should have had time to review, to ponder, 5 
to compare. There have been great actors on the stage 
of tragic humanity that might, with the same depth of 
confidence, have appealed from the levity of compatriot 
friends — too heartless for the sublime interest of their 
story, and too impatient for the labour of sifting its per- 10 
plexities — to the magnanimity and justice of enemies. 
To this class belongs the Maid of Arc. The ancient 
Romans were too faithful to the ideal of grandeur in 
themselves not to relent, after a generation or two, before 
the grandeur of Hannibal. Mithridates, a more doubtful 15 
person, yet, merely for the magic perseverance of his 
indomitable malice, won from the same Romans the only 
real honour that ever he received on earth. And we Eng- 
lish have ever shown the same homage to stubborn 
enmity. To work unflinchingly for the ruin of England; 20 
to say through life, by word and by deed, Delenda est 
Anglia Vidrix ! — that one purpose of malice, faithfully 
pursued, has quartered some people upon our national 
funds of homage as by a perpetual annuity. Better than 
an inheritance of service rendered to England herself has 25 
sometimes proved the most insane hatred to England. 
Hyder Ali, even his son Tippoo, though so far inferior, 
and Napoleon, have all benefited by this disposition 
among ourselves to exaggerate the merit of diabolic 
enmity. Not one of these men was ever capable, in a 30 
solitary instance, of praising an enemy (what do you say 

"^^^Only now forthcoming^^' — In 1847 began the publication (from 
official records) of Joanna's trial. It was interrupted, I fear, by the 
convulsions of 1848 ; and whether even yet finished I do not know. 



70 SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCE Y 

to that^ reader ?) ; and yet in their behalf, we consent to 
forget, not their crimes only, but (which is worse) their 
hideous bigotry and anti-magnanimous egotism — for 
nationality it was not. Suffren, and some half dozen of 
5 other French nautical heroes, because rightly they did 
us all the mischief they could (which was really great), 
are names justly reverenced in England. On the same 
principle. La Pucelle d'Orleans, the victorious enemy of 
England, has been destined to receive her deepest com- 

lo memoration from the magnanimous justice of Englishmen. 

Joanna, as we in England should call her, but according 

to her own statement, Jeanne (or, as M. Michelet asserts, 

Jean^) D'Arc was born at Domremy, a village on the 

marches of Lorraine and Champagne, and dependent upon 

15 the town of Vaucouleurs. I have called her a Lorrainer, 
not simply because the word is prettier, but because 
Champagne too odiously reminds us English of what are 
for us imaginary wines — which, undoubtedly, La Pucelle 
tasted as rarely as we English: we English, because the 

20 champagne of London is chiefly grown in Devonshire; La 
Pucelle, because the champagne of Champagne never, by any 

i^y^^w"; — M. Michelet asserts that there was a mystical meaning 
at that era in calling a child /ean ; it implied a secret commendation of 
a child, if not a dedication, to St. John the evangelist, the beloved 
disciple, the apostle of love and mysterious visions. But,. really, as the 
name was so exceedingly common, few people will detect a mystery in 
calling a boy by the name of Jack, though it does seem mysterious to call 
a girl Jack. It may be less so in France, where a beautiful practice 
has always prevailed of giving a boy his mother's name — preceded and 
strengthened by a male name, as Charles Anne^ Victor Victoire. In 
cases where a mother's memory has been unusually dear to a son, this 
vocal memento of her, locked into the circle of his own name, gives to 
it the tenderness of a testamentary relic, or a funeral ring. I presume, 
therefore, that La Pucelle must have borne the baptismal name of 
Jeanne Jean ; the latter with no reference, perhaps, to so sublime a 
person as St. John, but simply to some relative. 



JOAN OF ARC 71 

chance, flowed into the fountain of Domremy, from which 
only she drank. M. Michelet will have her to be a Cham- 
penoise^ and for no better reason than that she " took after 
her father," who happened to be a Champenois, 

These disputes, however, turn on refinements too nice. 5 
Domremy stood upon the frontiers, and, like other fron- 
tiers, produced a mixed race, representing the cis and the 
trans, A river (it is true) formed the boundary line at 
this point — the river Meuse ; and that^ in old days, might 
have divided the populations ; but in these days it did 10 
not ; there were bridges, there were ferries, and weddings 
crossed from the right bank to the left. Here lay two 
great roads, not so much for travellers that were few, as 
for armies that were too many by half. These two roads, 
one of which was the great highroad between France and 15 
Germany, decussated at this very point ; which is a learned 
way of saying that they formed a St. Andrew's Cross, or 
letter X. I hope the compositor will choose a good large 
X; in which case the point of intersection, the locus of 
conflux and intersection for these four diverging arms, 20 
will finish the reader's geographical education, by showing 
him to a hair's-breadth where it was that Domremy stood. 
These roads, so grandly situated, as great trunk arteries 
between two mighty realms,^ and haunted for ever by wars 
or rumours of wars, decussated (for anything I know to 25 
the contrary) absolutely under Joanna's bedroom window ; 
one rolling away to the right, past M. D 'Arc's old barn, 
and the other unaccountably preferring to sweep round 
that odious man's pig-sty to the left. 

On whichever side of the border chance had thrown 30 
Joanna, the same love to France would have been nurtured. 

1 And reminding one of that inscription, so justly admired by Paul 
Richter, which a Russian Czarina placed on a guide-post near Moscow: 
This is the road that leads to Constantinople, 



72 SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCE Y 

For it is a strange fact, noticed by M. Michelet and 
others, that the Dukes of Bar and Lorraine had for 
generations pursued the policy of eternal warfare with 
France on their own account, yet also of eternal amity 
5 and league with France in case anybody else presumed 
to attack her. Let peace settle upon France, and before 
long you might rely upon seeing the little vixen Lorraine 
flying at the throat of France. Let France be assailed 
by a formidable enemy, and instantly you saw a Duke of 

lo Lorraine insisting on having his own throat cut in sup- 
port of France ; which favour accordingly was cheerfully 
granted to him in three great successive battles: twice 
by the English, viz., at Crecy and Agincourt, once by 
the Sultan at Nicopolis. 

15 This sympathy with France during great eclipses, in 
those that during ordinary seasons were always teasing 
her with brawls and guerilla inroads, strengthened the 
natural piety to France of those that were confessedly 
the children of her own house. The outposts of France, 

20 as one may call the great frontier provinces, were of all 
localities the most devoted to the Fleurs de Lys. To wit- 
ness, at any great crisis, the generous devotion to these 
lilies of the little fiery cousin that in gentler weather was 
for ever tilting at the breast of France, could not but fan 

25 the zeal of France's legitimate daughters ; while to occupy 
a post of honour on the frontiers against an old hereditary 
enemy of France would naturally stimulate this zeal by a 
sentiment of martial pride, by a sense of danger always 
threatening, and of hatred always smouldering. That great 

30 four-headed road was a perpetual memento to patriotic 
ardour. To say " This way lies the road to Paris, and that 
other way to Aix-la-Chapelle ; this to Prague, that to 
Vienna," nourished the warfare of the heart by daily min- 
istrations of sense. The eye that watched for the gleams 



JOAN OF ARC 73 

of lance or helmet from the hostile frontier, the ear that 
listened for the groaning of wheels, made the highroad 
itself, with its relations to centres so remote, into a 
manual of patriotic duty. 

The situation, therefore, locally^ of Joanna was full of 5 
profound suggestions to a heart that listened for the 
stealthy steps of change and fear that too surely were 
in motion. But, if the place were grand, the time, the 
burden of the time, was far more so. The air overhead 
in its upper chambers was hiirtliitg with the obscure sound ; 10 
was dark with sullen fermenting of storms that had been 
gathering for a hundred and thirty years. The battle of 
Agincourt in Joanna's childhood had reopened the wounds 
of France. Crecy and Poictiers, those withering over- 
throws for the chivalry of France, had, before Agincourt 15 
occurred, been tranquilised by more than half a century ; 
hut this resurrection of their trumpet wails made the whole 
series of battles and endless skirmishes take their stations 
as parts in one drama. The graves that had closed sixty 
years ago seemed to fly open in sympathy with a sorrow 20 
that echoed their own. The monarchy of France laboured 
in extremity, rocked and reeled like a ship fighting with 
the darkness of monsoons. The madness of the poor king 
(Charles VI), falling in at such a crisis, like the case of 
women labouring in child-birth during the storming of a 25 
city, trebled the awfulness of the time. Even the wild 
story of the incident which had immediately occasioned 
the explosion of this madness — the case of a man un- 
known, gloomy, and perhaps maniacal himself, coming out 
of a forest at noonday, laying his hand upon the bridle of 30 
the king's horse, checking him for a moment to say, " Oh, 
king, thou art betrayed,'' and then vanishing, no man knew 
whither, as he had appeared for no man knew what — fell 
in with the universal prostration of mind that laid France 



74 SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCE Y 

on her knees, as before the slow unweaving of some ancient 
prophetic doom. The famines, the extraordinary diseases, 
the insurrections of the peasantry up and down Europe — 
these were chords struck from the same mysterious harp ; 
5 but these were transitory chords. There had been others 
of deeper and more ominous sound. The termination of 
the Crusades, the destruction of the Templars, the Papal 
interdicts, the tragedies caused or suffered by the house of 
Anjou, and by the Emperor — these were full of a more 

10 permanent significance. But, since then, the colossal fig- 
ure of feudalism was seen standing, as it were on tiptoe, at 
Crecy, for flight from earth : that was a revolution unparal- 
leled ; yet that was a trifle by comparison with the more 
fearful revolutions that were mining below the Church. By 

15 her own internal schisms, by the abominable spectacle of 
a double Pope — so that no man, except through political 
bias, could even guess which was Heaven's vicegerent, and 
which the creature of Hell — the Church was rehearsing, 
as in still earlier forms she had already rehearsed, those 

20 vast rents in her foundations which no man should ever 
heal. 

These were the loftiest peaks of the cloudland in the 
skies that to the scientific gazer first caught the colors of 
the 7tew morning in advance. But the whole vast range 

25 alike of sweeping glooms overhead dwelt upon all medi- 
tative minds, even upon those that could not distinguish 
the tendencies nor decipher the forms. It was, therefore, not 
her own age alone, as affected by its immediate calamities, 
that lay with such weight upon Joanna's mind, but her own 

30 age as one section in a vast mysterious drama, unweaving 
through a century back, and drawing nearer continually to 
some dreadful crisis. Cataracts and rapids were heard 
roaring ahead ; and signs were seen far back, by help of 
old men's memories, which answered secretly to signs now 



JOAN OF ARC 75 

coming forward on the eye, even as locks answer to keys. 
It was not wonderful that in such a haunted solitude, with 
such a haunted heart, Joanna should see angelic visions, 
and hear angelic voices. These voices whispered to her 
for ever the duty, self-imposed, of delivering France. Five 5 
years she listened to these monitory voices with internal 
struggles. At length she could resist no longer. Doubt 
gave way ; and she left her home for ever in order to 
present herself at the dauphin's court. 

The education of this poor girl was mean according to 10 
the present standard : was ineffably grand, according to a 
purer philosophic standard : and only not good for our 
age because for us it would be unattainable. She read noth- 
ing, for she could not read ; but she had heard others read 
parts of the Roman martyrology. She wept in sympathy 15 
with the sad " Misereres '^ of the Romish Church ; she rose 
to heaven with the glad triumphant " Te Deums " of 
Rome ; she drew her comfort and her vital strength from 
the rites of the same Church. But, next after these spirit- 
ual advantages, she owed most to the advantages of her 20 
situation. The fountain of Domremy was on the brink of 
a boundless forest ; and it was haunted to that degree by 
fairies that the parish priest {cure) was obliged to read 
mass there once a year, in order to keep them in any 
decent bounds. Fairies are important, even in a statistical 25 
view : certain weeds mark poverty in the soil ; fairies mark 
its solitude. As surely as the wolf retires before cities 
does the fairy sequester herself from the haunts of the 
licensed victualer. A village is too much for her nervous 
delicacy ; at most, she can tolerate a distant view of a 30 
hamlet. We may judge, therefore, by the uneasiness and 
extra trouble which they gave to the parson, in what 
strength the fairies mustered at Domremy, and, by a satis- 
factory consequence, how thinly sown with men and women 



76 SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCE Y 

must have been that region even in its inhabited spots. 
But the forests of Domremy — those were the glories of 
the land : for in them abode mysterious powers and ancient 
secrets that towered into tragic strength. " Abbeys there 
5 were, and abbey windows " — " like Moorish temples of 
the Hindoos '^ — that exercised even princely power both in 
Lorraine and in the German Diets. These had their sweet 
bells that pierced the forests for many a league at matins 
or vespers, and each its own dreamy legend. Few enough, 

10 and scattered enough, were these abbeys, so as in no 
degree to disturb the deep solitude of the region ; yet 
many enough to spread a network or awning of Christian 
sanctity over what else might have seemed a heathen wil- 
derness. This sort of religious talisman being secured, a 

15 man the most afraid of ghosts (like myself, suppose, or the 
reader) becomes armed into courage to wander for days in 
their sylvan recesses. The mountains of the Vosges, on 
the eastern frontier of France, have never attracted much 
notice from Europe, except in 18 13-14 for a few brief 

20 months, when they fell within Napoleon's line of defence 
against the Allies. But they are interesting for this among 
other features, that they do not, like some loftier ranges, 
repel woods ; the forests and the hills are on sociable 
terms. " Live and let live " is their motto. For this 

25 reason, in part, these tracts in Lorraine were a favourite 
hunting-ground with the Carlovingian princes. About six 
hundred years before Joanna's childhood, Charlemagne 
was known to have hunted there. That, of itself, was a 
grand incident in the traditions of a forest or a chase. 

30 In these vast forests, also, were to be found (if anywhere 
to be found) those mysterious fawns that tempted solitary 
hunters into visionary and perilous pursuits. Here was 
seen (if anywhere seen) that ancient stag who was already 
nine hundred years old, but possibly a hundred or two more, 



JOAN OF ARC 77 

when met by Charlemagne ; and the thing was put beyond 
doubt by the inscription upon his golden collar. I believe 
Charlemagne knighted the stag ; and, if ever he is met again 
by a king, he ought to be made an earl, or, being upon the 
marches of France, a marquis. Observe, I don't absolutely 5 
vouch for all these things : my own opinion varies. On a 
fine breezy forenoon I am audaciously sceptical ; but as 
twilight sets in my credulity grows steadily, till it becomes 
equal to anything that could be desired. And I have heard 
candid sportsmen declare that, outside of these very forests, 10 
they laughed loudly at all the dim tales connected with 
their haunted solitudes, but, on reaching a spot notoriously 
eighteen miles deep within them, they agreed with Sir 
Roger de Coverley that a good deal might be said on both 
sides. 15 

Such traditions, or any others that (like the stag) con- 
nect distant generations with each other, are, for that 
cause, sublime ; and the sense of the shadowy, connected 
with such appearances that reveal themselves or not accord- 
ing to circumstances, leaves a colouring of sanctity over 20 
ancient forests, even in those minds that utterly reject the 
legend as a fact. 

But, apart from all distinct stories of that order, in any 
solitary frontier between two great empires — as here, for 
instance, or in the desert between Syria and the Euphrates 25 
— there is an inevitable tendency, in minds of any deep 
sensibility, to people the solitudes with phantom images of 
powers that were of old so vast Joanna, therefore, in her 
quiet occupation of a shepherdess, would be led continually 
to brood over the political condition of her country by the 30 
traditions of the past no less than by the mementoes of the 
local present. 

M. Michelet, indeed, says that La Pucelle was not a 
shepherdess. I beg his pardon ; she was. What he rests 



78 SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCE Y 

upon I guess pretty well : it is the evidence of a woman 
called Haumette, the most confidential friend of Joanna. 
Now, she is a good witness, and a good girl, and I like 
her ; for she makes a natural and affectionate report of 
5 Joanna's ordinary life. But still, however good she may 
be as a witness, Joanna is better ; and she, when speaking 
to the dauphin, calls herself in the Latin report Bergereta. 
Even Haumette confesses that Joanna tended sheep in her 
girlhood. And I believe that, if Miss Haumette were tak- 

lo ing coffee along with me this very evening (February 12, 
1847) — in which there would be no subject for scandal or 
for maiden blushes, because I am an intense philosopher, 
and Miss H. would be hard upon 450 years old — she 
would admit the following comment upon her evidence 

15 to be right. A Frenchman, about forty years ago — M. 
Simond, in his ** Travels '' — mentions accidentally the fol- 
lowing hideous scene as one steadily observed and watched 
by himself in chivalrous France not very long before the 
French Revolution : A peasant was plowing ; and the team 

20 that drew his plow was a donkey and a woman. Both were 
regularly harnessed ; both pulled alike. This is bad enough ; 
but the Frenchman adds that, in distributing his lashes, 
the peasant was obviously desirous of being impartial ; or, 
if either of the yokefellows had a right to complain, cer- 

25 tainly it was not the donkey. Now, in any country where 
such degradation of females could be tolerated by the 
state of manners, a woman of delicacy would shrink from 
acknowledging, either for herself or her friend, that she 
had ever been addicted to any mode of labour not strictly 

30 domestic ; because, if once owning herself a praedial ser- 
vant, she would be sensible that this confession extended 
by probability in the hearer's thoughts to the having in- 
curred indignities of this horrible kind. Haumette clearly 
thinks it more dignified for Joanna to have been darning 



JOAN OF ARC 79 

the stockings of her horny-hoofed father, M. D'Arc, than 
keeping sheep, lest she might then be suspected of having 
ever done something worse. But, luckily, there was no dan- 
ger of that : Joanna never was in service ; and my opinion 
is that her father should have mended his own stockings, 5 
since probably he was the party to make the holes in them, 
as many a better man than D'Arc does — meaning by that 
not myself, because, though probably a better man than 
D'Arc, I protest against doing anything of the kind. If I 
lived even with Friday in Juan Fernandez, either Friday 10 
must do all the darning, or else it must go undone. The 
better men that I meant were the sailors in the British navy, 
every man of whom mends his own stockings. Who else is 
to do it ? Do you suppose, reader, that the junior lords of 
the admiralty are under articles to darn for the navy ? 15 

The reason, meantime, for my systematic hatred of D'Arc 
is this : There was a story current in France before the 
Revolution, framed to ridicule the pauper aristocracy, who 
happened to have long pedigrees and short rent rolls : viz., 
that a head of such a house, dating from the Crusades, was 20 
overheard saying to his son, a Chevalier of St. Louis, 
" Chevalier^ as-tu dotifie au cochon a manger ? " Now, it is 
clearly made out by the surviving evidence that D'Arc 
would much have preferred continuing to say, " Ma Jille, 
as-tu donne aic cochon a manger V^ to saying, ^^ Pucelle 2^ 
d'' Orlkans^ as-tu sauve les fleurs-de-lysV There is an old 
English copy of verses which argues thus : 

"If the man that turnips cries 
Cry not when his father dies, 

Then 'tis plain the man had rather 30 

Have a turnip than his father." 

I cannot say that the logic of these verses was ever entirely 
to my satisfaction. I do not see my way through it as 



8o SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCE Y 

clearly as could be wished. But I see my way most clearly 
through D'Arc ; and the result is — that he would greatly 
have preferred not merely a turnip to his father, but the 
saving a pound or so of bacon to saving the Oriflamme of 
5 France. 

It is probable (as M. Michelet suggests) that the title of 
Virgin or Pucelle had in itself, and apart from the miracu- 
lous stories about her, a secret power over the rude soldiery 
and partisan chiefs of that period ; for in such a person 

10 they saw a representative manifestation of the Virgin Mary, 
who, in a course of centuries, had grown steadily upon the 
popular heart. 

As to Joanna^s supernatural detection of the dauphin 
(Charles VII) among three hundred lords and knights, I 

15 am surprised at the credulity which could ever lend itself 
to that theatrical juggle. Who admires more than myself 
the sublime enthusiasm, the rapturous faith in herself, of 
this pure creature ? But I am far from admiring stage 
artifices which not La Pucelle, but the court, must have 

20 arranged ; nor can surrender myself to the conjurer's leger- 
demain, such as may be seen every day for a shilling. 
Southey's "Joan of Arc'' was published in 1796. Twenty 
years after, talking with Southey, I was surprised to find 
him still owning a secret bias in favor of Joan, founded on 

25 her detection of the dauphin. The story, for the benefit 
of the reader new to the case, was this : La Pucelle was 
first made known to the dauphin, and presented to his 
court, at Chinon ; and here came her first trial. By way 
of testing her supernatural pretensions, she was to find out 

30 the royal personage amongst the whole ark of clean and 
unclean creatures. Failing in this coup d^essai^ she would 
not simply disappoint many a beating heart in the glitter- 
ing crowd that on different motives yearned for her success, 
but she would ruin .herself, and, as the oracle within had 



JOAN OF ARC gi 

told her, would, by ruining herself, ruin France. Our own 
Sovereign Lady Victoria rehearses annually a trial not so 
severe in degree, but the same in kind. She ^* pricks " for 
sheriffs. Joanna pricked for a king. But observe the dif- 
ference : our own Lady pricks for two men out of three ; 5 
Joanna for one man out of three hundred. Happy Lady 
of the Islands and the Orient! — she can go astray in her 
choice only by one-half : to the extent of one-half she must 
have the satisfaction of being right. And yet, even with 
these tight limits to the misery of a boundless discretion, 10 
permit me, Liege Lady, with all loyalty, to submit that 
now and then you prick with your pin the wrong man. 
But the poor child from Domremy, shrinking under the 
gaze of a dazzling court — not because dazzling (for in vis- 
ions she had seen those that were more so), but because 15 
some of them wore a scoffing smile on their features — 
how should she throw her line into so deep a river to angle 
for a king, where many a gay creature was sporting that 
masqueraded as kings in dress ! Nay, even more than any 
true king would have done : for, in Southey's version of 20 
the story, the dauphin says, by way of trying the virgin's 
magnetic sympathy with royalty, 

"On the throne, 
I the while mingling with the menial throng, 
Some courtier shall be seated.'' 25 

This usurper is even crowned : '^ the jeweled crown shines 
on a menial's head.'' But, really, that is ''^ un pen fort ^^ ; 
and the mob of spectators might raise a scruple whether 
our friend the jackdaw upon the throne, and the dauphin 
himself, were not grazing the shins of treason. For the dau- 30 
phin could not lend more than belonged to him. Accord- 
ing to the popular notion, he had no crown for himself; 
consequently none to lend, on any pretence whatever, until 



82 SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCE Y 

the consecrated Maid should take him to Rheims. This 
was the popular notion in France. But certainly it was 
, the dauphin's interest to support the popular notion, as he 
meant to use the services of Joanna. For if he were king 
5 already, what was it that she could do for him beyond 
Orleans ? That is to say, what more than a merely military 
service could she render him ? And, above all, if he were 
king without a coronation, and without the oil from the 
sacred ampulla, what advantage was yet open to him by 

10 celerity above his competitor, the English boy ? Now was 
to be a race for a coronation: he that should win that 
race carried the superstition of France along with him : he 
that should first be drawn from the ovens of Rheims was 
under that superstition baked into a king. 

15 La Pucelle, before she could be allowed to practise as a 
warrior, was put through her manual and platoon exercise, 
as a pupil in divinity, at the bar of six eminent men in 
wigs. According to Southey (v. 393, bk. iii., in the original 
edition of his "Joan of Arc,'') she "appalled the doctors.'' 

20 It's not easy to do that: but they had some reason to feel 
bothered, as that surgeon would assuredly feel bothered 
who, upon proceeding to dissect a subject, should find the 
subject retaliating as a dissector upon himself, especially 
if Joanna ever made the speech to them which occupies 

25 V. 354-391, bk. iii. It is a double impossibility: ist, 
because a piracy from Tindal's " Christianity as old as the 
Creation " — a piracy^ parte ante, and by three centuries ; 
2d, it is quite contrary to the evidence on Joanna's trial. 
Southey's "Joan" of a.d. 1796 (Cottle, Bristol) tells the 

30 doctors, among other secrets, that she never in her life 
attended — ist. Mass; nor 2d, the Sacramental Table; nor 
3d, Confession. In the meantime, all this deistical con- 
fession of Joanna's, besides being suicidal for the interest 
of her cause, is opposed to the depositions upon both trials. 



JOAN OF ARC 83 

The very best witness called from first to last deposes that 
Joanna attended these rites of her Church even too often ; 
was taxed with doing so ; and, by blushing, owned the 
charge as a fact, though certainly not as a fault. Joanna 
was a girl of natural piety, that saw God in forests and hills 5 
and fountains, but did not the less seek him in chapels and 
consecrated oratories. 

This peasant girl was self-educated through her own 
natural meditativeness. If the reader turns to that divine 
passage in " Paradise Regained " which Milton has put 10 
into the mouth of our Saviour when first entering the 
wilderness, and musing upon the tendency of those great 
impulses growing within himself 

" Oh, what a multitude of thoughts at once 
Awakened in me swarm, while I consider 15 

What from within I feel myself, and hear 
What from without comes often to my ears, 
111 sorting with my present state compared ! 
When I was yet a child, no childish play 
To me was pleasing ; all my mind was set 20 

Serious to learn and know, and thence to do. 
What might be public good ; myself I thought 
Born to that end " 

he will have some notion of the vast reveries which brooded 
over the heart of Joanna in early girlhood, when the wings 25 
were budding that should carry her from Orleans to Rheims ; 
when the golden chariot was dimly revealing itself that 
should carry her from the kingdom of France Delivered to 
the Eternal Kingdom. 

It is not requisite for the honour of Joanna, nor is there 30 
in this place room, to pursue her brief career of action. 
That, though wonderful, forms the earthly part of her 
story ; the spiritual part is the saintly passion of her 



84 SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCE Y 

imprisonment, trial, and execution. It is unfortunate, there- 
fore, for Southey's " Joan of Arc '' (which, however, should 
always be regarded as a juvenile effort), that precisely when 
her real glory begins the poem ends. But this limitation 
5 of the interest grew, no doubt, from the constraint insep- 
arably attached to the law of epic unity. Joanna's history 
bisects into two opposite hemispheres, and both could not 
have been presented to the eye in one poem, unless by sac- 
rificing all unity of theme, or else by involving the earlier 

lo half, as a narrative episode, in the latter ; which, however, 
might have been done, for it might have been communi- 
cated to a fellow-prisoner, or a confessor, by Joanna herself. 
It is sufficient, as concerns this section of Joanna's life, to 
say that she fulfilled, to the height of her promises, the 

15 restoration of the prostrate throne. France had become 
a province of England, and for the ruin of both, if such a 
yoke could be maintained. Dreadful pecuniary exhaustion 
caused the English energy to droop ; and that critical 
opening La Pucelle used with a corresponding felicity of 

20 audacity and suddenness (that were in themselves porten- 
tous) for introducing the wedge of French native resources, 
for rekindling the national pride, and for planting the dau- 
phin once more upon his feet. When Joanna appeared, he 
had been on the point of giving up the struggle with' the 

25 English, distressed as they were, and of flying to the 
south of France. She taught him to blush for such abject 
counsels. She liberated Orleans, that great city, so deci- 
sive by its fate for the issue of the war, and then beleaguered 
by the English with an elaborate application of engineer- 

30 ing skill unprecedented in Europe. Entering the city after 
sunset on the 29th of April, she sang mass on Sunday, May 
8th, for the entire disappearance of the besieging force. 
On the 29th of June she fought and gained over the English 
the decisive battle of Patay ; on the 9th of July she took 



JOAN OF ARC 85 

Troyes by a coup-de-main from a mixed garrison of English 
and Burgundians ; on the 15th of that month she carried 
the dauphin into Rheims ; on Sunday the 17th she crowned 
him ; and there she rested from her labour of triumph. 
All that was to be done she had now accomplished ; what 5 
remained was — to suffer. 

All this forward movement was her own ; excepting one 
man, the whole council was against her. Her enemies were 
all that drew power from earth. Her supporters were her 
own strong enthusiasm, and the headlong contagion by 10 
which she carried this sublime frenzy into the hearts 
of women, of soldiers, and of all who lived by labour. 
Henceforward she was thwarted ; and the worst error that 
she committed was to lend the sanction of her presence to 
counsels which she had ceased to approve. But she had 15 
now accomplished the capital objects which her own visions 
had dictated. These involved all the rest. Errors were 
now less important ; and doubtless it had now become 
more difficult for herself to pronounce authentically what 
were errors. The noble girl had achieved, as by a rapture 20 
of motion, the capital end of clearing out a free space 
around her sovereign, giving him the power to move his 
arms with effect, and, secondly, the inappreciable end of 
winning for that sovereign what seemed to all France the 
heavenly ratification of his rights, by crowning him with 25 
the ancient solemnities. She had made it impossible for 
the English now to step before her. They were caught 
in an irretrievable blunder, owing partly to discord among 
the uncles of Henry VI, partly to a want of funds, but 
partly to the very impossibility which they believed to 30 
press with tenfold force upon any French attempt to fore- 
stall theirs. They laughed at such a thought ; and, while 
they laughed, she did it. Henceforth the single redress 
for the English of this capital oversight, but which never 



86 SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCEY 

could have redressed it effectually, was to vitiate and taint 
the coronation of Charles VII as the work of a witch. 
That policy, and not malice (as M. Michelet is so happy 
to believe), was the moving principle in the subsequent 

5 prosecution of Joanna. Unless they unhinged the force of 
the first coronation in the popular mind by associating 
it with power given from hell, they felt that the sceptre of 
the invader was broken. 

But she, the child that, at nineteen, had wrought wonders 

10 so great for France, was she not elated ? Did she not lose, 
as men so often have lost, all sobriety of mind when stand- 
ing upon the pinnacle of success so giddy ? Let her 
enemies declare. During the progress of her movement, 
and in the centre of ferocious struggles, she had mani- 

15 fested the temper of her feelings by the pity which she 
had everywhere expressed for the suffering enemy. She 
forwarded to the English leaders a touching invitation 
to unite with the French, as brothers, in a common cru- 
sade against infidels — thus opening the road for a soldierly 

20 retreat. She interposed to protect the captive or the 
wounded ; she mourned over the excesses of her coun- 
trymen ; she threw herself off her horse to kneel by the 
dying English soldier, and to comfort him with such min- 
istrations, physical or spiritual, as his situation allowed. 

25 "Nolebat," says the evidence, **uti ense suo, aut quem- 
quam interficere." She sheltered the English that invoked 
her aid in her own quarters. She wept as she beheld, 
stretched on the field of battle, so many brave enemies 
that had died without confession. And, as regarded her- 

30 self, her elation expressed itself thus: on the day when she 
had finished her work, she wept ; for she knew that, when 
her triumphal task was done, her end must be approach- 
ing. Her aspirations pointed only to a place which seemed 
to her more than usually full of natural piety, as one in 



JOAN OF ARC 87 

which it would give her pleasure to die. And she uttered, 
between smiles and tears, as a wish that inexpressibly 
fascinated her heart, and yet was half fantastic, a broken 
prayer that God would return her to the solitudes from 
which he had drawn her, and suffer her to become a shep- 5 
herdess once more. It was a natural prayer, because 
nature has laid a necessity upon every human heart to 
seek for rest and to shrink from torment. Yet, again, 
it was a half-fantastic prayer, because, from childhood 
upward, visions that she had no power to mistrust, and the 10 
voices which sounded in her ear for ever, had long since 
persuaded her mind that for her no such prayer could be 
granted. Too well she felt that her mission must be 
worked out to the end, and that the end was now at hand. 
All went wrong from this time. She herself had created 15 
thQ funds out of which the French restoration should grow; 
but she was not suffered to witness their development or 
their prosperous application. More than one military plan 
was entered upon which she did not approve. But she 
still continued to expose her person as before. Severe 20 
wounds had not taught her caution. And at length, in a 
sortie from Compiegne (whether through treacherous col- 
lusion on the part of her own friends is doubtful to this 
day), she was made prisoner by the Burgundians, and 
finally surrendered to the English. 25 

Now came her trial. This trial, moving of course under 
English influence, was conducted in chief by the Bishop of 
Beauvais. He was a Frenchman, sold to English interests, 
and hoping, by favour of the English leaders, to reach the 
highest preferment. "Bishop that art. Archbishop that 30 
shalt be. Cardinal that mayest be," were the words that 
sounded continually in his ear ; and doubtless a whisper 
of visions still' higher, of a triple crown, and feet upon the 
necks of kings, sometimes stole into his heart. M. Michelet 



8S SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCEY 

is anxious to keep us in mind that this bishop was but 
an agent of the English. True. But it does not better 
the case for his countryman that, being an accomplice 
in the crime, making himself the leader in the persecution 
5 against the helpless girl, he was willing to be all this in 
the spirit, and with the conscious vileness of a cat's-paw. 
Never from the foundations of the earth was there such a 
trial as this, if it were laid open in all its beauty of defence 
and all its hellishness of attack. Oh, child of France ! 

lo shepherdess, peasant girl! trodden under foot by all around 
thee, how I honour thy flashing intellect, quick as God's 
lightning, and true as God's lightning to its mark, that ran 
before France and laggard Europe by many a century, con- 
founding the malice of the ensnarer, and making dumb the 

15 oracles of falsehood ! Is it not scandalous, is it not humili- 
ating to civilization, that, even at this day, France exhibits 
the horrid spectacle of judges examining the prisoner against 
himself; seducing him, by fraud, into treacherous conclu- 
sions against his own head ; using the terrors of their power 

20 for extorting confessions from the frailty of hope ; nay 
(which is worse), using the blandishments of condescension 
and snaky kindness for thawing into compliances of grati- 
tude those whom they had failed to freeze into terror ? 
Wicked judges! barbarian jurisprudence ! — that, sitting in 

25 your own conceit on the summits of social wisdom, have 
yet failed to learn the first principles of criminal justice — 
sit ye humbly and with docility at the feet of this girl from 
Domremy, that tore your webs of cruelty into shreds and 
dust. "Would you examine me as a witness against 

30 myself ? " was the question by which many times she defied 
their arts. Continually she showed that their interrogations 
were irrelevant to any business before the court, or that 
entered into the ridiculous charges against her. General 
questions were proposed to her on points of casuistical 



JOAN OF ARC 89 

divinity ; two-edged questions, which not one of them- 
selves could have answered, without, on the one side, land- 
ing himself in heresy (as then interpreted), or, on the 
other, in some presumptuous expression of self-esteem. 
Next came a wretched Dominican, that pressed her with 5 
an objection, which, if applied to the Bible, would tax 
every one of its miracles with unsoundness. The monk 
had the excuse of never having read the Bible. M. Michelet 
has no such excuse ; and it makes one blush for him, as a 
philosopher, to find him describing such an argument as 10 
"weighty," whereas it is but a varied expression of rude 
Mahometan metaphysics. Her answer to this, if there 
were room to place the whole in a clear light, was as shat- 
tering as it was rapid. Another thought to entrap her by 
asking what language the angelic visitors of her solitude 15 
had talked — as though heavenly counsels could want 
polyglot interpreters for every word, or that God needed 
language at all in whispering thoughts to a human heart. 
Then came a worse devil, who asked her whether the Arch- 
angel Michael had appeared naked. Not comprehending 20 
the vile insinuation, Joanna, whose poverty suggested to her 
simplicity that it might be the costliness of suitable robes 
which caused the demur, asked them if they fancied God, 
who clothed the flowers of the valleys, unable to find 
raiment for his servants. The answer of Joanna moves a 25 
smile of tenderness, but the disappointment of her judges 
makes one laugh exultingly. Others succeeded by troops, 
who upbraided her with leaving her father ; as if that greater 
Father, whom she believed herself to have been serving, did 
not retain the power of dispensing with his own rules, or 30 
had not said that for a less cause than martyrdom man and 
woman should leave both father and mother. 

On Easter Sunday, when the trial had been long pro- 
ceeding, the poor girl fell so ill as to cause a belief that 



90 SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCEY 

she had been poisoned. It was not poison. Nobody had 
any interest in hastening a death so certain. M. Michelet, 
whose sympathies with all feelings are so quick that one 
would gladly see them always as justly directed, reads the 

5 case most truly. Joanna had a twofold malady. She was 
visited by a paroxysm of the complaint called homesickness. 
The cruel nature of her imprisonment, and its length, could 
not but point her solitary thoughts, in darkness and in 
chains (for chained she was), to Domremy. And the 

10 season, which was the most heavenly period of the spring, 
added stings to this yearning. That was one of her mala- 
dies — nostalgia^ as medicine calls it ; the other was weari- 
ness and exhaustion from daily combats with malice. She 
saw that everybody hated her and thirsted for her blood ; 

15 nay, many kind-hearted creatures that would have pitied 
her profoundly, as regarded all political charges, had their 
natural feelings warped by the belief that she had dealings 
with fiendish powers. She knew she was to die ; that was 
not the misery ! the misery was that this consummation 

20 could not be reached without so much intermediate strife, 
as if she were contending for some chance (where chance 
was none) of happiness, or were dreaming for a moment 
of escaping the inevitable. Why, then, did she contend ? 
Knowing that she would reap nothing from answering her 

25 persecutors, why did she not retire by silence from the 
superfluous contest ? It was because her quick and eager 
loyalty to truth would not suffer her to see it darkened by 
frauds which she could expose, but others, even of candid 
listeners, perhaps, could not ; it was through that imperish- 

30 able grandeur of soul which taught her to submit meekly 
and without a struggle to her punishment, but taught her 
not to submit — no, not for a moment — to calumny as to 
facts, or to misconstruction as to motives. Besides, there 
were secretaries all around the court taking down her words. 



JOAN OF ARC 91 

That was meant for no good to her. But the end does not 
always correspond to the meaning. And Joanna might say to 
herself, ^* These words that will be used against me to-morrow 
and the next day, perhaps, in some nobler generation, may 
rise again for my justification." Yes, Joanna, they are rising 5 
even now in Paris, and for more than justification ! 

Woman, sister, there are some things which you do not 
execute as well as your brother, man ; no, nor ever will. 
Pardon me if I doubt whether you will ever produce a 
great poet from your choirs, or a Mozart, or a Phidias, or 10 
a Michael Angelo, or a great philosopher, or a great scholar. 
By which last is meant — not one who depends simply on 
an infinite memory, but also on an infinite and electrical 
power of combination ; bringing together from the four 
winds, like the angel of the resurrection, what else were 15 
dust from dead men's bones, into the unity of breathing 
life. If you ca7i create yourselves into any of these great 
creators, why have you not ? 

Yet, sister woman, though I cannot consent to find a 
Mozart or a Michael Angelo in your sex, cheerfully, and 20 
with the love that burns in depths of admiration, I acknowl- 
edge that you can do one thing as well as the best of us 
men — a greater thing than even Milton is known to have 
done, or Michael Angelo ; you can die grandly, and as 
goddesses would die, were goddesses mortal. If any dis- 25 
tant worlds (which may be the case) are so far ahead of us 
Tellurians in optical resources as to see distinctly through 
their telescopes all that we do on earth, what is the 
grandest sight to which we ever treat them ? St. Peter's 
at Rome, do you fancy, on Easter Sunday, or Luxor, or 30 
perhaps the Himalayas ? Oh, no ! my friend ; suggest some- 
thing better ; these are baubles to them ; they see in other 
worlds, in their own, far better toys of the same kind. 
These, take my word for it, are nothing. Do you give it 



92 SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCE Y 

up ? The finest thing, then, we have to show them is a 
scaffold on the morning of execution. I assure you there 
is a strong muster in those far telescopic worlds, on any 
such morning, of those who happen to find themselves 
5 occupying the right hemisphere for a peep at us. How, 
then, if it be announced in some such telescopic world by 
those who make a livelihood of catching glimpses at our 
newspapers, whose language they have long since deci- 
phered, that the poor victim in the morning's sacrifice is a 

10 woman ? How, if it be published in that distant world 
that the sufferer wears upon her head, in the eyes of many, 
the garlands of martyrdom ? How, if it should be some 
Marie Antoinette, the widowed queen, coming forward on 
the scaffold, and presenting to the morning air her head, 

15 turned gray by sorrow — daughter of Caesars kneeling down 
humbly to kiss the guillotine, as one that worships death ? 
How, if it were the noble Charlotte Corday, that in the 
bloom of youth, that with the loveliest of persons, that 
with homage waiting upon her smiles wherever she turned 

20 her face to scatter them — homage that followed those 

• smiles as surely as the carols of birds, after showers in 
spring, follow the reappearing sun and the racing of sun- 
beams over the hills — yet thought all these things cheaper 
than the dust upon her sandals, in comparison of deliver- 

25 ance from hell for her dear suffering France ! Ah ! these 
were spectacles indeed for those sympathising people in 
distant worlds; and some, perhaps, would suffer a sort of 
martyrdom themselves, because they could not testify their 
wrath, could not bear witness to the strength of love and to 

30 the fury of hatred that burned within them at such scenes, 
could not gather into golden urns some of that glorious 
dust which rested in the catacombs of earth. 

On the Wednesday after Trinity Sunday in 1431, being 
then about nineteen years of age, the Maid of Arc under- 



JOAN OF ARC 93 

went her martyrdom. She was conducted before mid-day, 
guarded by eight hundred spearmen, to a platform of pro- 
digious height, constructed of wooden billets supported by 
occasional walls of lath and plaster, and traversed by hollow 
spaces in every direction for the creation of air currents. 5 
The pile '' struck terror,'' says M. Michelet, " by its height " ; 
and, as usual, the English purpose in this is viewed as one 
of pure malignity. But there are two ways of explaining 
all that. It is probable that the purpose was merciful. 
On the circumstances of the execution I shall not linger. 10 
Yet, to mark the almost fatal felicity of M. Michelet in 
finding out -whatever may injure the English name, at a 
moment when every reader will be interested in Joanna's 
personal appearance, it is really edifying to notice the inge- 
nuity by which he draws into light from a dark corner a 15 
very unjust account of it, and neglects, though lying upon 
the highroad, a very pleasing one. Both are from English 
pens. Grafton, a chronicler, but little read, being a stiff- 
necked John Bull, thought fit to say that no wonder Joanna 
should be a virgin, since her " foule face " was a satis- 20 
factory solution of that particular merit. Holinshead, on 
the other hand, a chronicler somewhat later, every way 
more important, and at one time universally read, has given 
a very pleasing testimony to the interesting character of 
Joanna's person and engaging manners. Neither of these 25 
men lived till the following century, so that personally this 
evidence is none at all. Grafton sullenly and carelessly 
believed as he wished to believe ; Holinshead took pains 
to inquire, and reports undoubtedly the general impression 
of France. But I cite the case as illustrating M. Michelet's 30 
candour.^ 

1 Amongst the many ebullitions of M. Michelet's fury against us 
poor English are four which will be likely to amuse the reader ; and 
they are the more conspicuous in collision with the justice which he 



94 SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCE Y 

The circumstantial incidents of the execution, unless 

with more space than I can now command, I should be 

unwilling to relate. I should fear to injure, by imperfect 

report, a martyrdom which to myself appears so unspeak- 

5 ably grand. Yet, for a purpose, pointing not at Joanna, 

sometimes does us, and the very indignant admiration which, under 
some aspects, he grants to us. 

1. Our English literature he admires with some gnashing of teeth. 
He pronounces it " fine and sombre," but, I lament to add, " skeptical, 
Judaic, Satanic — in a word, antichristian." That Lord Byron should 
figure as a member of this diabolical corporation will not surprise men. 
It will surprise them to hear that Milton is one of its Satanic leaders. 
Many are the generous and eloquent Frenchmen, besides Chateau- 
briand, who have, in the course of the last thirty years, nobly suspended 
their own burning nationality, in order to render a more rapturous 
homage at the feet of Milton ; and some of them have raised Milton 
almost to a level with angelic natures. Not one of them has thought 
of looking for him below the earth. As to Shakspere, M. Michelet 
detects in him a most extraordinary m.are's nest. It is this : he does 
" not recollect to have seen the name of God " in any part of his 
works. On reading such words, it is natural to rub one's eyes, and sus- 
pect that all one has ever seen in this world may have been a pure 
ocular delusion. In particular, I begin myself to suspect that the 
word "/dJ gloire^^ never occurs in any Parisian journal. "The great 
English nation," says M. Michelet, " has one immense profound vice " 
— to wit, " pride." Why, really, that may be true ; but we have a 
neighbour not absolutely clear of an " immense profound vice," as like 
ours in colour and shape as cherry to cherry. In short, M. Michelet 
thinks us, by fits and starts, admirable — only that we are detestable ; 
and he would adore some of our authors, were it not that so intensely 
he could have wished to kick them. 

2. M. Michelet thinks to lodge an arrow in our sides by a very odd 
remark upon Thomas a Kempis : which is, that a man of any conceiv- 
able European blood — a Finlander, suppose, or a Zantiote — might 
have written Tom; only not an Englishman. Whether an Englishman 
could have forged Tom must remain a matter of doubt, unless the 
thing had been tried long ago. That problem was intercepted for ever 
by Tom's perverseness in choosing to manufacture himself. Yet, since 
nobody is better aware than M. Michelet that this very point of Kempis 



JOAN OF ARC 95 

but at M. Michelet — viz., to convince him that an English- 
man is capable of thinking more highly of La Pucelle than 
even her admiring countrymen — I shall, in parting, allude 
to one or two traits in Joanna^s demeanour on the scaffold, 
and to one or two in that of the bystanders, which authorise 

having manufactured Kempis is furiously and hopelessly litigated, three 
or four nations claiming to have forged his work for him, the shocking 
old doubt will raise its snaky head once more — whether this forger, 
who rests in so much darkness, might not, after all, be of English 
blood. Tom, it may be feared, is known to modern English literature 
chiefly by an irreverent mention of his name in a line of Peter Pindar's 
(Dr. Wolcot) fifty years back, where he is described as 

" Kempis Tom, 
Who clearly shows the way to Kingdom Come." 

Few in these days can have read him, unless in the Methodist version of 
John Wesley. Among those few, however, happens to be myself; 
which arose from the accident of having, when a boy of eleven, received 
a copy of the ** De Imitatione Christi " as a bequest from a relation 
who died very young ; from which cause, and from the external pretti- 
ness of the book — being a Glasgow reprint by the celebrated Foulis, 
and gaily bound — I was induced to look into it, and finally read it 
many times over, partly out of some sympathy which, even in those 
days, I had with its simplicity and devotional fervour, but much more 
from the savage delight I found in laughing at Tom's Latinity. That^ I 
freely grant to M. Michelet, is inimitable. Yet, after all, it is not cer- 
tain whether the original was Latin. But, however that may have 
been, if it is possible that M. Michelet * can be accurate in saying that 
there are no less than sixty French versions (not editions, observe, but 
separate versions) existing of the " De Imitatione," how prodigious 

* ^^ If M. Michelet can be accurate ^^ : — However, on consideration, this statement 
does not depend on Michelet. The bibliographer Barbier has absolutely specified 
sixty in a separate dissertation, soixante traductions^ among those even that have not 
escaped the search. The Italian translations are said to be thirty. As to mere 
editions^ not counting the early MSS. for half a century before printing was introduced, 
those in Latin amount to 2000, and those in French to 1000. Meantime, it is very clear 
to me that this astonishing popularity, so entirely unparalleled in literature, could not 
have existed except in Roman Catholic times, nor subsequently have lingered in any 
Protestant land. It was the denial of Scripture fountains to thirsty lands which made 
this slender rill of Scripture truth so passionately welcome. 



96 SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCEY 

me in questioning an opinion of his upon this martyr's firm- 
ness. The reader ought to be reminded that Joanna D'Arc 
was subjected to an unusually unfair trial of opinion. Any 
of the elder Christian martyrs had not much to fear oi per- 
5 sonal rancour. The martyr was chiefly regarded as the 

must have been the adaptation of the book to the religious heart of the 
fifteenth century ! Excepting the Bible, but excepting that only in 
Protestant lands, no book known to man has had the same distinction. 
It is the most marvellous bibliographical fact on record. 

3. Our English girls, it seems, are as faulty in one way as w^e English 
males in another. None of us men could have written the Opera Omnia 
of Mr. a Kempis ; neither could any of our girls have assumed male 
attire hke La Pucelle. But why ? Because, says Michelet, English 
girls and German think so much of an indecorum. Well, that is a 
good fault, generally speaking. But M. Michelet ought to have remem- 
bered a fact in the martyrologies which justifies both parties — the 
French heroine for doing, and the general choir of English girls for 
not doing. A female saint, specially renowned in France, had, for a 
reason as weighty as Joanna's — viz., expressly to shield her modesty 
among men — worn a male military harness. That reason and that 
example authorised La Pucelle ; but our English girls, as a body, have 
seldom any such reason, and certainly no such saintly example, to 
plead. This excuses them. Yet, still, if it is indispensable to the 
national character that our young women should now and then tres- 
pass over the frontier of decorum, it then becomes a patriotic duty in 
me to assure M. Michelet that we have such ardent females among us, 
and in a long series ; some detected in naval hospitals when too sick to 
remember their disguise ; some on fields of battle ; multitudes never 
detected at all ; some only suspected ; and others discharged without 
noise by war offices and other absurd people. In our navy, both royal 
and commercial, and generally from deep remembrances of slighted 
love, women have sometimes served in disguise for many years, taking 
contentedly their daily allowance of burgoo, biscuit, or cannon-balls — 
anything, in short, digestible or indigestible, that it might please Provi- 
dence to send. One thing, at least, is to their credit: never any of 
these poor masks, with their deep silent remembrances, have been 
detected through murmuring, or what is nautically understood by 
** skulking." So, for once, M. Michelet has an erratum to enter upon 
the fly-leaf of his book in presentation copies. 



JOAN OF ARC 97 

enemy of Caesar ; at times, also, where any knowledge of 
the Christian faith and morals existed, with the enmity 
that arises spontaneously in the worldly against the spirit- 
ual. But the martyr, though disloyal, was not supposed 
to be therefore anti-national ; and still less was individually 
hateful. What was hated (if anything) belonged to his 
class, not to himself separately. Now, Joanna, if hated at 
all, was hated personally, and in Rouen on national grounds. 

4. But the last of these ebullitions is the most lively. We English, 
at Orleans, and after Orleans (which is not quite so extraordinary, if all 
were told), fled before the Maid of Arc. Yes, says M. Michelet, you 
did: deny it, if you can. Deny it, nion cher ? I don't mean to deny 
it. Running away, in many cases, is a thing so excellent that no phil- 
osopher would, at times, condescend to adopt any other step. All of 
us nations in Europe, without one exception, have shown our phil- 
osophy in that way at times. Even people '-''qui ne se rendeiit pas'*"* 
have deigned both to run and to shout, ^^ Satwe qui peut T^ at odd 
times of sunset ; though, for my part, I have no pleasure in recalling 
unpleasant remembrances to brave men ; and yet, really, being so phil- 
osophic, they ought not to be unpleasant. But the amusing feature in 
M. Michelet's reproach is the way in which he improves and varies 
against us the charge of running, as if he were singing a catch. Listen 
to him: They ^'■showed their backs,'''' did these English. (Hip, hip, 
hurrah ! three times three!) ^^ Behind good walls they let themselves be 
taken.^"* (Hip, hip ! nine times nine !) They " ran as fast as their legs 
could carry them. ^"^ (Hurrah! twenty-seven times twenty-seven !) They 
^^ ra7t before a girV ; they did. (Hurrah! eighty-one times eighty- 
one !) This reminds one of criminal indictments on the old model 
in English courts, where (for fear the prisoner should escape) the crown 
lawyer varied the charge perhaps through forty counts. The law laid 
its guns so as to rake the accused at every possible angle. While the 
indictment was reading, he seemed a monster of crime in his own 
eyes ; and yet, after all, the poor fellow had but committed one offence, 
and not always that. N. B. — Not having the French original at 
hand, I make my quotations from a friend's copy of Mr. Walter Kelly's 
translation ; which seems to me faithful, spirited, and idiomatically 
English — liable, in fact, only to the single reproach of occasional 
provincialisms. 



98 SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCE Y 

Hence there would be a certainty of calumny- arising 
against her such as would not affect martyrs in general. 
That being the case, it would follow of necessity that some 
people would impute to her a willingness to recant. No 

5 innocence could escape that. Now, had she really testified 
this willingness on the scaffold, it would have argued noth- 
ing at all but the weakness of a genial nature shrinking 
from the instant approach of torment. And those will 
often pity that weakness most who, in their own persons, 

10 would yield to it least. Meantime, there never was a 
calumny uttered that drew less support from the recorded 
circumstances. It rests upon no positive testimony, and 
it has a weight of contradicting testimony to stem. And 
yet, strange to say, M. Michelet, who at times seems to 

15 admire the Maid of Arc as much as I do, is the one sole 
writer among her friends who lends some countenance to 
this odious slander. His words are that, if she did not 
utter this word r<f^^;^/ with her lips, she uttered it in her 
heart. " Whether she said the word is uncertain ; but I 

20 affirm that she thought it." 

Now, I affirm that she did not ; not in any sense of the 
word '^ thought^^ applicable to the case. Here is France 
calumniating La Pucelle ; here is England defending her. 
M. Michelet can only mean that, on a priori principles, 

25 every woman must be presumed liable to such a weak- 
ness ; that Joanna was a woman ; efgo^ that she was liable 
to such a weakness. That is, he only supposes her to 
have uttered the word by an argument which presumes it 
impossible for anybody to have done otherwise. I, on the 

30 contrary, throw the onus of the argument not on presum- 
able tendencies of nature, but on the known facts of that 
morning's execution, as recorded by multitudes. What 
else, I demand, than mere weight of metal, absolute nobil- 
ity of deportment, broke the vast line of battle then 



JOAN OF ARC 99 

arrayed against her ? What else but her meek, saintly 
demeanour won, from the enemies that till now had believed 
her a witch, tears of rapturous admiration ? ** Ten thou- 
sand men," says M. Michelet himself — "ten thousand 
men wept " ; and of these ten thousand the majority were s 
political enemies knitted together by cords of superstition. 
What else was it but her constancy, united with her angelic 
gentleness, that drove the fanatic English soldier — who 
had sworn to throw a fagot on her scaffold as his tribute 
of abhorrence, that did so, that fulfilled his vow — sud- lo 
denly to turn away a penitent for life, saying everywhere 
that he had seen a dove rising upon wings to heaven from 
the ashes where she had stood ? What else drove the exe- 
cutioner to kneel at every shrine for pardon to his share in 
the tragedy ? And, if all this were insufficient, then I cite 15 
the closing act of her life as valid on her behalf, were 
all other testimonies against her. The executioner had 
been directed to apply his torch from below. He did 
so. The fiery smoke rose upward in billowing volumes. 
A Dominican monk was then standing almost at her side. 20 
Wrapped up in his sublime office, he saw not the danger, 
but still persisted in his prayers. Even then, when the 
last enemy was racing up the fiery stairs to seize her, even 
at that moment did this noblest of girls think only for him^ 
the one friend that would not forsake her, and not for her- 25 
self ; bidding him with her last breath to care for his own 
preservation, but to leave her to God. That girl, whose 
latest breath ascended in this sublime expression of self- 
oblivion, did not utter the word recant either with her lips 
or in her heart. No ; she did not, though one should rise 30 
from the dead to swear it. 

Bishop of Beauvais I thy victim died in fire upon a 
scaffold — thou upon a down bed. But, for the departing 



lOO SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCE Y 

minutes of life, both are oftentimes alike. At the farewell 
crisis, when the gates of death are opening, and flesh is 
resting from its struggles, oftentimes the tortured and the 
torturer have the same truce from carnal torment ; both 
5 sink together into sleep ; together both sometimes kindle 
into dreams. When the mortal mists were gathering fast 
upon you two, bishop and shepherd girl — when the pavil- 
ions of life were closing up their shadowy curtains about 
you — let us try, through the gigantic glooms, to decipher 

10 the flying features of your separate visions. 

The shepherd girl that had delivered France — she, from 
her dungeon, she, from her baiting at the stake, she, from 
her duel with fire, as she entered her last dream — saw 
Domremy, saw the fountain of Domremy, saw the pomp of 

15 forests in which her childhood had wandered. That Easter 
festival which man had denied to her languishing heart — 
that resurrection of springtime, which the darkness of dun- 
geons had intercepted from her^ hungering after the glorious 
liberty of forests — were by God given back into her hands 

20 as jewels that had been stolen from her by robbers. With 
those, perhaps (for the minutes of dreams can stretch into 
ages), was given back to her by God the bliss of childhood. 
By special privilege for her might be created, in this fare- 
well dream, a second childhood, innocent as the first ; but 

25 not, like that^ sad with the gloom of a fearful mission in 
the rear. This mission had now been fulfilled. The storm 
was weathered ; the skirts even of that mighty storm were 
drawing off. The blood that she was to reckon for had 
been exacted ; the tears that she was to shed in secret had 

30 been paid to the last. The hatred to herself in all eyes 
had been faced steadily, had been suffered, had been sur- 
vived. And in her last fight upon the scaffold she had 
triumphed gloriously ; victoriously she had tasted the 
stings of death. For all, except this comfort from her 



JOAN OF ARC loi 

farewell dream, she had died — died amid the tears of ten 
thousand enemies — died amid the drums and trumpets of 
armies — died amid peals redoubling upon peals, volleys 
upon volleys, from the saluting clarions of martyrs. 

Bishop of Beauvais ! because the guilt-burdened man is 5 
in dreams haunted and waylaid by the most frightful of his 
crimes, and because upon that fluctuating mirror — rising 
(like the mocking mirrors of mirage in Arabian deserts) 
from the fens of death — most of all are reflected the sweet 
countenances which the man has laid in ruins ; therefore I 10 
know, bishop, that you also, entering your final dream, saw 
Domremy. That fountain, of which the witnesses spoke 
so much, showed itself to your eyes in pure morning dews ; 
but neither dews, nor the holy dawn, could cleanse away 
the bright spots of innocent blood upon its surface. By 15 
the fountain, bishop, you saw a woman seated, that hid 
her face. But, as you draw near, the woman raises her 
wasted features. Would Domremy know them again for 
the features of her child ? Ah, but you know them, bishop, 
well ! Oh, mercy ! what a groan was that which the ser- 20 
vants, waiting outside the bishop's dream at his bedside, 
heard from his labouring heart, as at this moment he turned 
away from the fountain and the woman, seeking rest in the 
forests afar off. Yet not so to escape the woman, whom 
once again he must behold before he dies. In the forests 25 
to which he prays for pity, will he find a respite ? What a 
tumult, what a gathering of feet is there ! In glades where 
only wild deer should run armies and nations are assem- 
bling ; towering in the fluctuating crowd are phantoms 
that belong to departed hours. There is the great English 30 
Prince, Regent of France. There is my Lord of Win- 
chester, the princely cardinal, that died and made no sign. 
There is the bishop of Beauvais, clinging to the shelter of 
thickets. What building is that which hands so rapid are 



I02 SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCE Y 

raising ? Is it a martyr's scaffold ? Will they burn the 
child of Domremy a second time ? No ; it is a tribunal 
that rises to the clouds ; and two nations stand around it, 
waiting for a trial. Shall my Lord of Beauvais sit again 

5 upon the judgment-seat, and again number the hours for 
the innocent ? Ah, no ! he is the prisoner at the bar. 
Already all is waiting: the mighty audience is gathered, 
the Court is hurrying to their seats, the witnesses are 
arrayed, the trumpets are sounding, the judge is taking his 

10 place. Oh, but this is sudden ! My lord, have you no 
counsel ? " Counsel I have none ; in heaven above, or on 
earth beneath, counsellor there is none now that would take 
a brief from me : all are silent." Is it, indeed, come to this ? 
Alas ! the time is short, the tumult is wondrous, the crowd 

15 stretches away into infinity; but yet I will search in it for 
somebody to take your brief ; I know of somebody that will 
be your counsel. Who is this that cometh from Domremy ? 
Who is she in bloody coronation robes from Rheims ? Who 
is she that cometh with blackened flesh from walking the 

20 furnaces of Rouen ? This is she, the shepherd girl, coun- 
sellor that had none for herself, whom I choose, bishop, for 
yours. She it is, I engage, that shall take my lord's brief. 
She it is, bishop, that would plead for you ; yes, bishop, she 
— when heaven and earth are silent. 



NOTES 



THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH 

" In October 1849 there appeared in Blackwood'' s Magazine an article 
entitled The English Mail-Coach^ or the Glory of Motion. There was 
no intimation that it was to be continued; but in December 1849 there 
followed in the same magazine an article in two sections, headed by 
a paragraph explaining that it was by the author of the previous article 
in the October number, and was to be taken in connexion with that 
article. One of the sections of this second article was entitled The 
Vision of Sudden Death, and the other Dream-Fugue on the above the^ne 
of Sudden Death. When De Quincey revised the papers in 1854 for 
republication in volume iv of the Collective Edition of his writings, he 
brought the whole under the one general title of The English Mail- 
Coach, dividing the text, as at present, into three sections or chapters, 
the first with the sub-title The Glory of Motion, the second with the 
sub-title The Vision of Sudden Death, and the third with the sub- title 
Dream-Fugue, founded on the preceding theme of Sudden Death. Great 
care was bestowed on the revision. Passages that had appeared in the 
magazine articles were omitted ; new sentences were inserted ; and the 
language was retouched throughout." — Masson. Cf. as to the revi- 
sion. Professor Dowden's article, " How De Quincey ^ox\i^A,^'' Saturday 
Review, Feb. 23, 1895. This selection is found vcv Works, M-Z.^^or^i^ ed., 
Vol. XIII, pp. 270-327 ; Riverside ed.. Vol. I, pp. 517-582. 

1 6 He had married the daughter of a duke : ** Mr. John Palmer, a 
native of Bath, and from about 1768 the energetic proprietor of the 
Theatre Royal in that city, had been led, by the wretched state in those 
days of the means of intercommunication between Bath and London, 
and his own consequent difficulties in arranging for a punctual succes- 
sion of good actors at his theatre, to turn his attention to the improve- 
ment of the whole system of Post-Office conveyance, and of locomotive 
machinery generally, in the British Islands. The result was a scheme 
for superseding, on the great roads at least, the then existing system of 
sluggish and irregular stage-coaches, the property of private persons 
and companies, by a new system of government coaches, in connexion 
with the Post-Office, carrying the mails and also a regulated nuniber 

103 



I04 SELECTIONS FROM BE QUINCE Y 

of passengers, with clockwork precision, at a rate of comparative speed, 
which he hoped should ultimately be not less than ten miles an hour. 
The opposition to the scheme was, of course, enormous ; coach pro- 
prietors, innkeepers, the Post-Office officials themselves, were all against 
Mr. Palmer ; he was voted a crazy enthusiast and a public bore. Pitt, 
however, when the scheme was submitted to him, recognized its feasi- 
bility ; on the 8th of August 1784 the first mail-coach on Mr. Balmer's 
plan started from London at 8 o'clock in the morning and reached 
Bristol at II o'clock at night; and from that day the success of the 
new system was assured. — Mr. Palmer himself, having been appointed 
Surveyor and Comptroller-General of the Post-Office, took rank as an 
eminent and wealthy public man, M. P. for Bath and what not, and 
lived till 18 1 8. De Quincey makes it one of his distinctions that he 
*had married the daughter of a duke,' and in a footnote to that para- 
graph he gives the lady's name as ' Lady Madeline Gordon.* From an 
old Debrett, however, I learn that Lady Madelina Gordon, second 
daughter of Alexander, fourth Duke of Gordon, was first married, on 
the 3d of April 1789, to Sir Robert Sinclair, Bart., and next, on the 
25th of November 1805, to Charles Palmer^ of Lockley Parky Berks^ Esq. 
If Debrett is right, her second husband was not John Palmer of Mail- 
Coach celebrity, and De Quincey is wrong." — Masson. 

1 (footnote) Invention of the cross : Concerning the Inventio sanctae 
crncisy see Smith, Dictionary of Christian Antiquities, Vol. I, p. 503. 

2 4 National result : Cf. De Quincey's paper on Travelling, Worksy 
Riverside ed.. Vol. II, especially pp. 313-314 ; Masson's ed., Vol. I, espe- 
cially pp. 270-271. 

3 13 The four terms of Michaelmas, Lent, Easter, and Act: These 
might be called respectively the autumn, winter, spring, and summer 
terms. Michaelmas, the feast of St. Michael and All Angels, is on 
September 29. Hilary and Trinity are other names for Lent term and 
Act term respectively. Act term is the last term of the academic year ; 
its name is that originally given to a disputation for a Master's degree ; 
such disputations took place at the end of the year generally, and hence 
gave a name to the summer term. Although the rules concerning resi- 
dence at Oxford are more stringent than in De Quincey's time, only 
eighteen weeks' residence is required during the year, six in Michaelmas, 
six in Lent, and six in Easter and Act. 

3 17 Going down: Cf. "Going down with victory," i.e. from London 
into the country. 

3 30 Posting-houses : inns where relays of horses were furnished 
for coaches and carriages. Cf. De Quincey on Travelling, loc. cit. 



NOTES I OS 

4 3 An old tradition . . . from the reign of Charles II : Then no one 
sat outside ; later, outside places were taken by servants, and were 
quite cheap. 

4 9 Attaint the foot : The word is used in its legal sense. The blood 
of one convicted of high treason is " attaint," and his deprivations 
extend to his descendants, unless Parliament remove the attainder. 

4 14 Pariahs : The fate of social outcasts seems to have taken early 
and strong hold upon De Quincey's mind ; one of the Suspiria was to 
have enlarged upon this theme. Strictly speaking, the Pariahs is that 
one of the lower castes of Hindoo society of which foreigners have seen 
most ; it is not in all districts the lowest caste, however. 

5 6 Objects not appearing, etc. : De non apparentibus et non existen- 
tibus eadem est lex, a Roman legal phrase. 

5 16 ** Snobs": Apparently snob originally meant "shoemaker"; 
then, in university cant, a "townsman" as opposed to a "gownsman." 
Cf. Gradus ad Cantabrigiam (1824), quoted in Century Dictionary : 
" Snobs. — A term applied indiscriminately to all who have not the 
honour of being members of the university ; but in a more particular 
manner to the * profanum vulgus,' the tag-rag and bob-tail, who vegetate 
on the sedgy banks of Camus." This use is in De Quincey's mind. 
Later, in the strikes of that time, the workmen who accepted lower 
wages were called snobs ; those who held out for higher, nobs. 

7 33 Fo Fo . . . Fi Fi : " This paragraph is a caricature of a story 
told in Staunton's Account of the Earl of Macartney's Embassy to 
China in 1792." — Masson. 

8 4 Ca ira ("This will do," "This is the go"): "a proverb of the 
French Revolutionists when they were hanging the aristocrats in the 
streets, &c., and the burden of one of the most popular revolutionary 
songs, * Qa ira^ <^a ira^ ^a ira.'' " — Masson. 

• 8 18 All morality, — Aristotle's, Zeno's, Cicero's : Each of these 
three has a high place in the history of ethical teaching. Aristotle 
wrote the so-called Nicomachean Ethics. According to his teaching, 
"ethical virtue is that permanent direction of the will which guards 
the mean [t6 /neo-ov] proper for us. . . . Bravery is the mean between 
cowardice and temerity; temperance, the mean between inordinate 
desire and stupid indifference ; etc." (Ueberweg, History of Philos- 
ophy^ Vol. I, p. 169). Zeno, who died about 264 B.C., founded about 
308 the Stoic sect, which took its name from the " Painted Porch " 
(Stool ^olkiKt]) in the Agora at Athens, where the master taught. The 
Stoics held that men should be free from passion, and undisturbed by 
joy or grief, submitting themselves uncomplainingly to their fate. Such 



io6 SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCE Y 

austere views are, of course, as far as possible removed from those of 
the Eudaemonist, who sought happiness as the end of life. Cicero was 
the author of De Officiis, " Of Duties." 

9 9 Astrological shadows : misfortunes due to being born under an 
unlucky star; house of life is also an astrological term. 

9 24 Von Troil's Iceland : The Letters on Iceland (Pinkerton's Voy- 
ages and Travels^ Vol. I, p. 621), containing Observations . . . 7nade dur- 
ing a Voyage undertaken in the year iyy2^ by Uno Von Troil, D.D., 
of Stockholm, contains no chapter of the kind. Such a chapter had 
appeared, however, in N. Horrebow's (Danish, 1758) Natural History of 
Iceland: "Chap. LXXII. Concerning snakes. No snakes of any kind 
are to be met with throughout the whole island." In Bos well's y"<?/^;^j"c7//, 
Vol. IV, p. 314, Temple ed., there is a much more correct allusion, 
which may have been in De Quincey's mind : " Langton said very well 
to me afterwards, that he could repeat Johnson's conversation before 
dinner, as Johnson had said that he could repeat a complete chapter 
of The Natural History of Iceland^ from the Danish of Horrebow, the 
whole of which was exactly thus : ' Chap. LXXII. Concerni7tg Sjtakes. 
There are no snakes to be met with throughout the whole island.' " 

9 25 A parliamentary rat : one who deserts his own party when it 
is losing. 

10 16 ^* Jam proximus,*' etc. : ^neid, II, lines 311-312 : " Now next 
(to Deiphobus' house) Ucalegon (i.e. his house) blazes ! " 

11 27 Quarterings : See p. 47, footnote, and note 47 2. 

1 1 32 Within benefit of clergy : Benefit of clergy was, under old Eng- 
lish law, the right of clerics, afterw^ard extended to all who could read, 
to plead exemption from trial before a secular judge. This privilege 
was first legally recognized in 1274, and was not wholly abolished 
until 1827. 

12 9 Quarter Sessions : This court is held in England in the coun- 
ties by justices of the peace for the trial of minor criminal offenses and 
to administer the poor laws, etc. 

12 26 False echoes of Marengo: General Desaix was shot through 
the heart at the battle of Marengo (June 14, 1800) ; he died without a 
word, and his body was found by Rovigo (cf. Memoirs of the Duke of 
Rovigo, London, 1835, Vol. I, p. 181), "stripped of his clothes, and 
surrounded by other naked bodies." Napoleon, however, published 
three different versions of an heroic and devoted message from Desaix 
to himself, the original version being : " Go, tell the First Consul that 
I die with this regret, — that I have not done enough for posterity." 
(Cf. Lanfrey, History of Napoleon the Firsts 2d ed., London, 1886, 



NOTES 107 

Vol. II, p. 39.) Napoleon himself was credited likewise with the words 
De Quincey adopts. "Why is it not permitted me to weep " is one 
version (Bussey, History of Napoleon, London, 1840, Vol. I, p. 302). 
Cf. Hazlitt, Life of Napoleon, 2d ed., London, 1852, Vol. II, p. 317, 
footnote. 

12 (footnote) The cry of the foundering line-of-battle ship " Vengeur ": 
On the I St of June, 1794, the English fleet under Lord Howe defeated 
the French under Villaret-Joyeuse, taking six ships and sinking a sev- 
enth, the Vengeur. This ship sank, as a matter of fact, with part of her 
crew on board, imploring aid which there was not time to give them. 
Some two hundred and fifty men had been taken off by the English ; 
the rest were lost. On the 9th of July Barrere published a report set- 
ting forth " how the Vengeur, . . . being entirely disabled, . . . refused to 
strike, though sinking ; how the enemies fired on her, but she returned 
their fire, shot aloft all her tricolor streamers, shouted Vive la Republique, 
. . . and so, in this mad whirlwind of fire and shouting and invincible 
despair, went down into the ocean depths ; Vive la Republique and a 
universal volley from the upper deck being the last sounds she made." 
Cf. Carlyle, Sinking of the Ve^igeur, and French Revolution, Book XVIII, 
Chap. VI. 

12 (footnote) La Garde meurt, etc. : " This phrase, attributed to Cam- 
bronne, who was made prisoner at Waterloo, was vehemently denied by 
him. It was invented by Rougemont, a prolific author of mots, two 
days after the battle, in the IndependantP — Fournier's L Esprit dans 
VHistoire, trans. Bartlett, Familiar Quotations, p. 661. 

13 25 Brummagem: Birmingham became early the chief place of 
manufacture of cheap wares. Hence the name Brummagem, a vulgar 
pronunciation of the name of the city, has become in England a com- 
mon name for cheap, tawdry jewelry. Cf. also Shakespeare, Richard III, 
Act I, sc. iv, 1. 55 : 

False, fleeting, perjured Clarence. 

13 27 Luxor occupies part of the site of ancient Thebes, capital of 
Egypt ; its antiquities are famous. 

14 9 But on our side . . . was a tower of moral strength, etc. : Cf. 
Shakespeare, Richard III, Act V, sc. iii, 11. 12-13: 

Besides, the king's name is a tower of strength, 
Which they upon the adverse party want. 

14 20 Felt my heart burn within me : Cf. Luke xxiv. 32. 
14 32 A very fine story from one of our elder dramatists : The dram- 
atist in question has not been identified. I am indebted indirectly to 



io8 SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCE Y 

Professor W. Strunk, Jr., of Cornell University, for reference to Johann 
Caius' Of English Dogs^ translated by A. Fleming, in Arber's English 
Garner^ original edition, Vol. Ill, p. 253 (new edition. Social Eng- 
land Illustrated^ pp. 28-29), where, after telling how Henry the Seventh, 
perceiving that four mastiffs could overcome a lion, ordered the dogs 
all hanged, the writer continues : " I read an history answerable to this, 
of the selfsame Henry, who having a notable and an excellent fair falcon, 
it fortuned that the King's Falconers, in the presence and hearing of his 
Grace, highly commended his Majesty's Falcon, saying, that it feared 
not to intermeddle with an eagle, it was so venturous and so mighty a 
bird ; which when the king heard, he charged that the falcon should be 
killed without delay: for the selfsame reason, as it may seem, which 
was rehearsed in the conclusion of the former history concerning the 
same king." 

15 1 Omrahs . . . from Agra and Lahore : There seems to be a remi- 
niscence here of Wordsworth's Prelude^ Book X, 11. 18-20: 

The Great Mogul, when he 
Erewhile went forth from Agra or Lahore, 
Rajahs and Omrahs in his train. 

Ofurahy which is not found in Century Dictionary, is itself really plural 
of Arabic a7nir (ameer), a commander, nobleman. 

15 23 The 6th of Edward Longshanks : a De Quinceyan jest, of 
course. This would refer to a law of the sixth year of Edward I, or 
1278, but there are but fifteen chapters in the laws of that year. 

16 8 Not magna loquimur, . . . but vivimus : not '*we speak great 
things," but " we live " them. 

17 21 Marlborough forest is twenty-seven miles east of Bath, where 
De Quincey attended school. 

18 18 Ulysses, etc. : The allusion is, of course, to the slaughter of 
the suitors of Penelope, his wife, by Ulysses, after his return. Cf. Odys- 
sey, Books XXI-XXH. 

19 3 About Waterloo : i.e. about 181 5. This phrase is one of many 
that indicate the deep impression made by this event upon the English 
mind. Cf. p. 58. 

19 17 ** Say, all our praises," etc. : Cf. Pope, Moral Essays: Epistle 
III, Of the Use of Riches, 11. 249-250 : 

But all our praises why should lords engross, 
Rise, honest Muse ! and sing the Man of Ross, 

20 3 Turrets : "• Tourettes fyled rounde " appears in Chaucer's 
Knighfs Tale, 1. 1294, where it means the ring on a dog's collar 



NOTES 109 

through which the leash was passed. Skeat explains torets as " prob- 
ably eyes in which rings will turn round, because each eye is a little 
larger than the thickness of the ring." Cf. Chaucer's Treatise on the 
Astrolabe^ Part I, sec. 2, " This ring renneth in a maner turet," ** this 
ring runs in a kind of eye.'* But Chaucer does not refer to harness. 

21 2 Mr. Waterton tells me : Charles Waterton, the naturalist, was 
born in 1782 and died in 1865. -^i^ Wanderings in South America was 
published in 1825. 

23 11 Earth and her children : This paragraph is about one fifth of 
the length of the corresponding paragraph as it appeared in Blackwood. 
For the longer version see Masson's ed., Vol. XIII, p. 289, note 2. 

24 14 The General Post-Office : The present office was opened Sept. 
23, 1829. St. Martin's-le-Grand is a church within the "city" of Lon- 
don, so named to distinguish it from St. Martin's-in-the-Fields, which 
faces what is now Trafalgar Square, and is, as the name indicates, out- 
side the " city." The street takes its name from the church. 

28 10 Barnet is a Hertfordshire village, eleven miles north of London. 

29 33 A ** Courier" evening paper, containing the gazette: A gazette 
was originally one of the three official papers of the kingdom ; afterwards 
any official announcement, as this of a great victory. 

30 17 Fey : This is not a Celtic word ; it is the Anglo-Saxon f^ge 
retained in Lowland Scotch, which is the most northerly English dialect. 
The word appears frequently in descriptions of battles, the Anglo- 
Saxon fatalistic philosophy teaching that certain warriors entered the 
conflict /^^^, "doomed." Now the meaning is altered slightly: "You 
are surely fey," would be said in Scotland, as Professor Masson remarks, 
to a person observed to be in extravagantly high spirits, or in any mood 
surprisingly beyond the bounds of his ordinary temperament, — the 
notion being that the excitement is supernatural, and a presage of his 
approaching death, or of some other calamity about to befall him. 

3127 The inspiration of God, etc.: This is an indication — more 
interesting than agreeable, perhaps — of the heights to which the martial 
ardor of De Quincey's toryism rises. 

33 13 Caesar the Dictator, at his last dinner-party, etc.: related by Sue- 
tonius in his life of Julius Caesar, Chap. LXXXVII : " The day before 
he died, some discourse occurring at dinner in M. Lepidus' house upon 
that subject, which was the most agreeable way of dying, he expressed 
his preference for what is sudden and unexpected " (repentijtum inopina- 
tumque praetulerat). The story is told by Plutarch and Appian also. 

35 13 BiaOavaros : "De Quincey has evidently taken this from John 
Donne's treatise : BIAGANATOS, A Declaration of that Paradoxe or 



no SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCE Y 

Thesis^ That Self-homicide is not so naturally Si7t, that it may never he 
otherwise^ 1644. See his paper on Suicide^ etc.j Masson's ed., VIII, 398 
[Riverside, IX, 209]. But not even Donne's precedent justifies the word 
formation. The only acknowledged compounds are ^laio-davaaia, * violent 
death,' and ^laio-ddvaToSy * dying a violent death.' Even ^Ig, OdvaroSf 
' death by violence,' is not classical." — Hart. But the form ^laddvaros 
is older than Donne and is said to be common in MSS. It should be 
further remarked that neither of the two compounds cited is classical. 
As to De Quincey's interpretation of Caesar's meaning here, cf. Meri- 
vale's History of the Romans U7tder the Empire^ Chap. XXI, where 
he translates Caesar's famous reply : " That which is least expected." 
Cf. also Shakespeare, yiw/zV/j" Ccesar^ Act II, sc. ii, 1. 33. 

37 25 ** Nature, from her seat," etc.: Cf. Milton's Paradise Lost, 
Book IX, 11. 780-784 : 

So saying, her rash hand in evil hour 
Forth reaching to the fruit, she pluck'd, she eat : 
Earth felt the wound, and Nature from her seat 
Sighing through all her works gave signs of woe, 
That all was lost. 

38 2 So scenical, etc. : De Quincey's love for effects of this sort 
appears everywhere. Cf. the opening paragraphs of the Revolt of the 
Tartars, Masson's ed., Vol. VII ; Riverside ed.. Vol. XII. 

39 4 Jus dominii : " the law of ownership," a legal term. 
39 14 Jus gentium : " the law of nations," a legal term. 

39 30 *' Monstrum horrendum,'* etc. : ^neid, III, 658. Polyphemus, 
one of the Cyclopes, whose eye was put out by Ulysses, is meant. Cf. 
Odyssey, IX, 371 et seq. ; yEneid, III, 630 et seq. 

40 1 One of the Calendars, etc. : The histories of the three Calenders, 
sons of kings, will be found in most selections from the Arabian Nights. 
A Calender is one of an order of Dervishes founded in the fourteenth 
century by an Andalusian Arab; they are wanderers who preach in 
market places and live by alms. 

40 10 Al Sirat : According to Mahometan teaching this bridge over 
Hades was in width as a sword's edge. Over it souls must pass to 
Paradise. 

40 12 Under this eminent man, etc. : For these two sentences the 
original in Blackwood had this, with its addition of good De Quinceyan 
doctrine : ** I used to call him Cyclops Mastigophorus, Cyclops the Whip- 
bearer, until I observed that his skill made whips useless, except to 
fetch off an impertinent fly from a leader's head, upon which I changed 
his Grecian name to Cyclops Diphr elates (Cyclops the Charioteer). I, 



NOTES III 

and others known to me, studied under him the diphrelatic art. Excuse, 
reader, a word too elegant to be pedantic. And also take this remark 
from me as ^. gage d^amitie — that no word ever was or can be pedantic 
which, by supporting a distinction, supports the accuracy of logic, or 
which fills up a chasm for the understanding.'* 

41 1 Some people have called me procrastinating : Cf. Page's (Japp's) 
Life, Chap. XIX, and Japp's De Quincey Memorials, Vol. II, pp. 45, 47, 49. 

42 11 The whole Pagan Pantheon: i.e. all the gods put together; 
from the Greek Ildz/^eioj/, a temple dedicated to all the gods. 

43 2 Seven atmospheres of sleep, etc. : Professor Hart suggests that 
De Quincey is here "indulging in jocular arithmetic. The three nights 
plus the three days, plus the present night, equal seven." Dr. Cooper 
compares with this a reference to the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus. But 
it seems doubtful whether any explanation is necessary. 

43 17 Lilliputian Lancaster : the county town of Lancashire, in which 
Liverpool and Manchester, towns of recent and far greater growth, are 
situated. 

44 (footnote) " Giraldus Cambrensis,'*or Gerald de Barry (i 146-1220), 
was a Welsh historian ; one of his chief works is the Itinerarium Cambrice, 
or Voyage in Wales. 

47 2 Quartering : De Quincey 's derivation of this word in his foot- 
note is correct, but its use in this French sense is not common. 
De Quincey, however, has it above, p. 11. 

49 8 The shout of Achilles : Cf. Homer, Iliady XVIII, 217 et seq. 

50 10 Buying it, etc. : De Quincey refers, no doubt, to the pay of 
common soldiers and to the practice of employing mercenaries. 

62 1 Faster than ever mill-race, etc. : the change in the wording of 
this sentence in De Quincey 's revision is, as Masson remarks, particu- 
larly characteristic of his sense of melody ; it read in Blackwood, ** We 
ran past them faster than ever mill-race in our inexorable flight." 

52 15 Here was the map, etc. : This sentence is an addition in the 
reprint. Masson remarks "how artistically it causes the due pause 
between the horror as still in rush of transaction and the backward 
look at the wreck when the crash was past." 

53 18 ** Whence the sound," etc. : Paradise Lost, Book XI, 11. 558-563. 

54 3 Woman's Ionic form : In thus using the word Ionic, De Quincey 
doubtless has in mind the character of Ionic architecture, with its tall 
and graceful column, differing from the severity of the Doric on the 
one hand and from the floridity of the Corinthian on the other. Prob- 
ably he is thinking of a caryatid. Cf. the following version of the old 
story of the origin of the styles of Greek architecture in Vitruvius, IV, 



112 SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCE Y 

Chap. I (Gwilt's translation), quoted by Hart : '* They measured a man's 
foot, and finding its length the sixth part of his height, they gave the 
column a similar proportion, that is, they made its height six times the 
thickness of the shaft measured at the base. Thus the Doric order 
obtained its proportion, its strength, and its beauty from the human 
figure. With a similar feeling they afterward built the Temple of Diana. 
But in that, seeking a new proportion, they used the female figure as a 
standard ; and for the purpose of producing a more lofty effect they 
first made it eight times its thickness in height. Under it they placed 
a base, after the manner of a shoe to the foot ; they also added volutes 
to its capital, like graceful curling hair hanging on each side, and the 
front they ornamented with cymatia and festoons in the place of hair. 
On the shafts they sunk channels, w^hich bear a resemblance to the folds 
of a matronal garment. Thus two orders were invented, one of a mas- 
culine character, without ornament, the other bearing a character which 
resembled the delicacy, ornament, and proportion of a female. The 
successors of these people, improving in taste, and preferring a more 
slender proportion, assigned seven diameters to the height of the Doric 
column, and eight and a half to the Ionic." 

55 3 Corymbi: clusters of fruit or flowers. 

55 28 Quarrel : the bolt of a crossbow, an arrow having a square, 
or four-edged head (from Middle Latin quadrelhis, diminutive of quad- 
rum^ a square). 

58 20 Waterloo and Recovered Christendom ! Cf. note 19 3. 

61 20 Then a third time the trumpet sounded: There are throughout 
this passage, as Dr. Cooper remarks, many reminiscences of the language 
of the Book of Revelation. Cf. this with Revelation viii. lo ; cf. 61 28 
with Revelation xii. 5, and 62 5 with ix. 13. 

63 29 The endless resurrections of His love : The following, which 
Masson prints as a postscript, was a part of De Quincey's introduction 
to the volume of the Collective Edition containing this piece: 

"'The English Mail-Coach.' — This little paper, according to my origi- 
nal intention, formed part of the ' Suspiria de Profundis ' ; from which, for a 
momentary purpose, I did not scruple to detach it, and to publish it apart, as 
sufficiently intelligible even when dislocated from its place in a larger whole. 
To my surprise, however, one or two critics, not carelessly in conversation, but 
deliberately in print, professed their inability to apprehend the meaning of the 
whole, or to follow the links of the connexion between its several parts. I am 
myself as little able to understand where the difficulty lies, or to detect any 
lurking obscurity, as these critics found themselves to unravel my logic. Possi- 
bly I may not be an indifferent and neutral judge in such a case. I will therefore 



\ 



NOTES 113 

sketch a brief abstract of the little paper according to my original design, and 
then leave the reader to judge how far this design is kept in sight through the 
actual execution. 

" Thirty-seven years ago, or rather more, accident made me, in the dead of 
night, and of a night memorably solemn, the solitary witness of an appalling 
scene, which threatened instant death in a shape the most terrific to two young 
people whom I had no means of assisting, except in so far as I was able to give 
them a most hurried warning of their danger; but even that not until they 
stood within the very shadow of the catastrophe, being divided from the most 
frightful of deaths by scarcely more, if more at all, than seventy seconds. 

" Such was the scene, such in its outline, from which the whole of this paper 
radiates as a natural expansion. This scene is circumstantially narrated in 
Section the Second, entitled ' The Vision of Sudden Death.' 

" But a movement of horror, and of spontaneous recoil from this dreadful 
scene, naturally carried the whole of that scene, raised and idealised, into my 
dreams, and very soon into a rolling succession of dreams. The actual scene, 
as looked down upon from the box of the mail, was transformed into a dream, as 
tumultuous and changing as a musical fugue. This troubled dream is circum- 
stantially reported in Section the Third, entitled ' Dream- Fugue on the theme 
of Sudden Death.' What I had beheld from my seat upon the mail, — the 
scenical strife of action and passion, of anguish and fear, as I had there witnessed 
them moving in ghostly silence, — this duel between life and death narrowing 
itself to a point of such exquisite evanescence as the collision neared : all these 
elements of the scene blended, under the law of association, with the pre- 
vious and permanent features of distinction investing the mail itself; which 
features at that time lay — ist, in velocity unprecedented, 2dly, in the power 
and beauty of the horses, 3dly, in the official connexion with the government of a 
great nation, and, 4thly, in the function, almost a consecrated function, of pub- 
lishing and diffusing through the land the great political events, and especially 
the great battles, during a conflict of unparalleled grandeur. These honorary 
distinctions are all described circumstantially in the First or introductory 
Section (' The Glory of Motion'). The three first were distinctions maintained 
at all times ; but the fourth and grandest belonged exclusively to the war with 
Napoleon; and this it was which most naturally introduced Waterloo into the 
dream. Waterloo, I understand, was the particular feature of the '■ Dream- 
Fugue ' which my censors were least able to account for. Yet surely Waterloo, 
which, in common with every other great battle, it had been our special privilege 
to publish over all the land, most naturally entered the dream under the licence 
of our privilege. If not — if there be anything amiss — let the Dream be respon- 
sible. The Dream is a law to itself; and as well quarrel with a rainbow for 
showing, or for not showing, a secondary arch. So far as I know, every element 
in the shifting movements of the Dream derived itself either primarily from 
the incidents of the actual scene, or from secondary features associated with the 
mail. For example, the cathedral aisle derived itself from the mimic combina- 
tion of features which grouped themselves together at the point of approaching 



114 SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCE Y 

collision — viz. an arrow-like section of the road, six hundred yards long, under 
the solemn lights described, with lofty trees meeting overhead in arches. The 
guard's horn, again— a humble instrument in itself — was yet glorified as the 
organ of publication for so many great national events. And the incident of 
the Dying Trumpeter, who rises from a marble bas-relief, and carries a marble 
trumpet to his marble lips for the purpose of warning the female infant, was 
doubtless secretly suggested by my own imperfect effort to seize the guard's 
horn, and to blow the warning blast. But the Dream knows best; and the 
Dream, I say again, is the responsible party." 



JOAN OF ARC 

This article appeared originally in Taifs Magazine for March and 
August, 1847 ; it was reprinted by De Quincey in 1854 in the third 
volume of his Collected Writings. It is found in Works, Masson's ed., 
Vol. V, pp. 384-416; Riverside ed., Vol. VI, pp. 178-215. 

64 10 Lorraine, now in great part in the possession of Germany, 
is the district in which Domremy, Joan's birthplace, is situated. 

65 14 Vaucouleurs : a town near Domremy ; cf. p. 70. 

65 28 En contumace : '*in contumacy," a legal term applied to one 
who, when summoned to court, fails to appear. 

66 13 Rouen : the city in Normandy where Joan was burned at 
the stake. 

66 25 The lilies of France : the royal emblem of France from very 
early times until the Revolution of 1789, when "the wrath of God and 
man combined to wither them." 

67 5 M. Michelet: Jules Michelet (1798-1874) is said to have spent 
forty years in the preparation of his great work, the History of France. 
Cf. the same, translated by G. H. Smith, 2 vols., Appleton, Vol. II, 
pp. 1 19-169 ; ox Joan of Arc, from Michelet's History of France^ trans- 
lated by O. W. Wight, New York, 1858. 

67 8 Recovered liberty: The Revolution of 1830 had expelled the 
restored Bourbon kings. 

67 20 The book against priests : Michelet's lectures as professor of 
history in the College de France, in which he attacked the Jesuits, 
were published as follows : Des Jesiiites, 1843 5 ^^ Pretre, de la Femme 
et de la Famille, 1844; Du Peuple, 1845. To the second De Quincey 
apparently refers. 

67 26 Back to the falconer's lure : The lure was a decoy used to 
recall the hawk to its perch, — sometimes a dead pigeon, sometimes an 
artificial bird, with some meat attached. 



NOTES IIS 

68 6 On the model of Lord Percy : These lines, as Professor Hart 
notes, in Percy's Folio, ed. Hales and Furnivall, Vol. II, p. 7, run: 

The stout Erie of Northumberland 

a vow to God did make, 
his pleasure in the Scottish woods 

3 som?«ers days to take. 

68 27 Pucelle d'Orleans : Maid of Orleans (the city on the Loire which 
Joan saved). 

69 1 The collection, etc. : The work meant is Quicherat, Proces de 
Condamnation et Rehabilitation de Jeanne d^Arc^ 5 vols., Paris, 1841- 
1849. ^^- ^^ Quincey's note. 

69 21 Delenda est Anglia Victrix ! " Victorious England must be de- 
stroyed ! " Cf. Delenda est Carthago I " Carthage must be destroyed ! " 
Delenda est Karthago is the version of Florus (II, 15) of the words used 
by Cato the Censor, just before the Third Punic War, whenever he was 
called upon to record his vote in the Senate on any subject under 
discussion. 

69 27 Hyder Ali (i 702-1 782), a Mahometan adventurer, made himself 
maharajah of Mysore and gave the English in India serious trouble; 
he was defeated in 1782 by Sir Eyre Coote. Tippoo Sahib, his son and 
successor, proved less dangerous and was finally killed at Seringapatam 
in 1799. 

70 4 Nationality it was not: i.e. nationalism — patriotism — it was 
not. Qi. Revolt of the Taj-tarSy Riverside ed., Vol. XII, p. 4; Masson*s 
ed.. Vol. VII, p. 370, where De Quincey speaks of the Torgod as 
"tribes whose native ferocity was exasperated by debasing forms of 
superstition, and by a nationality as well as an inflated conceit of their 
own merit absolutely unparalleled." Cf. also footnote, p. 94. 

70 4 Suffren: the great French admiral who in 1780-1781 inflicted 
so much loss upon the British. 

70 10 Magnanimous justice of Englishmen: As Professor Hart ob- 
serves, the treatment of Joan in Henry VI is hardly magnanimous. 

71 29 That odious man : Cf. pp. 79-80. 

72 12 Three great successive battles : Rudolf of Lorraine fell at 
Crecy (1346) ; Frederick of Lorraine at Agincourt (1415) ; the battle of 
Nicopolis, which sacrificed the third Lorrainer, took place in 1396. 

73 24 Charles VI (i 368-1 422) had killed several men during his 
first fit of insanity. He was for the rest of his life wholly unfit to 
govern. He declared Henry V of England, the conqueror of Agin- 
court, his successor, thus disinheriting the Dauphin, his son. 



Ii6 SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCE Y 

74 2 The famines, etc. : Horrible famines occurred in France and 
England in 131 5, 1336, and 1353. Such insurrections as Wat Tyler's, 
in 1381, are probably in De Quincey's mind. 

74 6 The termination of the Crusades : The Crusades came to an end 
about 1 27 1. "The ulterior results of the crusades," concludes Cox in 
Encyclopedia Britanttica, " were the breaking up of the feudal system, 
the abolition of serfdom, the supremacy of a common law over the 
independent jurisdiction of chiefs who claimed the right of private wars." 

74 7 The destruction of the Templars: This most famous of the mili- 
tary orders, founded in the twelfth century for the defense of the Latin 
kingdom of Jerusalem, having grown so powerful as to be greatly feared, 
was suppressed at the beginning of the fourteenth century. 

74 7 The Papal interdicts: " De Quincey has probably in mind 
such an interdict as that pronounced in 1200, by Innocent III, against 
France. All ecclesiastical functions were suspended and the land was 
in desolation." — Hart. England was put under interdict several times, 
as in 1 1 70 (for the murder of Becket) and 1208. 

74 8 The tragedies caused or suffered by the house of Anjou, and by 
the Emperor : " The Emperor is Konradin, the last of the Hohenstaufen, 
beheaded by Charles of Anjou at Naples, 1268. The subsequent cruel- 
ties of Charles in Sicily caused the popular uprising known as the 
Sicilian Vespers, 1282, in which many thousands of Frenchmen were 
assassinated." — Hart. 

74 10 The colossal figure of feudalism, etc. : The English yeomen at 
Crecy, overpowering the mounted knights of France, took from feudal- 
ism its chief support, — the superiority of the mounted knight to the 
unmounted yeoman. Cf. Green, History of the English People^ Book IV, 
Chap. II. 

74 15 The abominable spectacle of a double Pope : For thirty-eight 
years this paradoxical state of things endured. 

75 15 The Roman martyrology : a list of the martyrs of the Church, 
arranged according to the order of their festivals, and with accounts of 
their lives and sufferings. 

76 4 " Abbeys there were,'» etc. : Cf. Wordsworth, Peter Bell, Part 

Second : , , ^^. , 

Temples like those among the Hindoos, 

And mosques, and spires, and abbey windows, 

And castles all with ivy green. 

76 17 The Vosges . . . have never attracted much notice, etc. : They 
came into like prominence after De Quincey's day in the Franco-Prussian 
War of 1870. 



NOTES 117 

76 31 Those mysterious fawns, etc. : In some of the romances of the 
Middle Ages, especially those containing Celtic material, a knight, while 
hunting, is led by his pursuit of a white fawn (or a white stag or boar) 
to 2i fee (i.e. an inhabitant of the '* Happy Other-world") or into the 
confines of the " Happy Other-world " itself. Sometimes, as in the 
Guigemaroi Marie de France, the knight passes on to a series of adven- 
tures in consequence of his meeting with the white fawn. I owe this 
note to the kindness of Mr. S. W. Kinney, A.M., of Baltimore. 

76 33 That ancient stag : See Englische Studien^ Vol. V, p. 16, where 
additions are made to the following account from Hardwicke's Tradi- 
tions^ Superstitions y and Folk-Lore^ Manchester and London, 1872, p. 154 : 

This chasing of the white doe or the white hart by the spectre huntsman has 
assumed various forms. According to Aristotle a white hart was killed by 
Agathocles, King of Sicily, which a thousand years beforehand had been conse- 
crated to Diana by Diomedes. Alexander the Great is said by PHny to have 
caught a white stag, placed a collar of gold about its neck, and afterwards set it 
free. Succeeding heroes have in after days been announced as the capturers of 
this famous white hart. Julius Caesar took the place of Alexander, and Charle- 
magne caught a white hart at both Magdeburg, and in the Holstein woods. In 
1 1 72 William [Henry] the Lion is reported to have accomplished a similar feat, 
according to a Latin inscription on the walls of Lubeck Cathedral. Tradition 
says the white hart has been caught on Rothwell Hay Common, in Yorkshire, 
and in Windsor Forest. 

This reference I owe indirectly to Professor J. M. Manly, of Chicago. 

77 4 Or, being upon the marches of France, a marquis : Marquis is 
derived from marchy and was originally the title of the guardian of the 
frontier, or march. 

77 13 Agreed with Sir Roger de Coverley that a good deal might be 
said on both sides : This expression, as has been pointed out to me, is 
from the middle of Spectator No. 122, where Sir Roger, having been 
appealed to on a question of fishing privileges, replied, " with an air of 
a man who would not give his judgment rashly, that much might be said 
on both sides." It is likely, however, that De Quincey may have con- 
nected it in his mind with the discussion of witchcraft at the beginning 
of Spectator No. 117, where Addison balances the grounds for belief 
and unbelief somewhat as De Quincey does here. 

78 7 Bergereta: a very late Latin form of French bergerette, "a 
shepherdess." 

78 15 M. Simond, in his ** Travels " : The reference is to Journal of 
a Tour and Residence in Great Britain during the years 1810 and 
181 1, by Louis Simond, 2d ed. (Edinburgh, 18 17), to which is added 



Ii8 SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCE Y 

an appendix on France, written in December, 1815, and October, 1816. 
De Quincey refers to this story with horror several times, but such 
scenes are not yet wholly unknown. 

79 21 A Chevalier of St. Louis : The French order of St. Louis was 
founded by Louis XIV in 1693 for military service. After its discon- 
tinuance at the Revolution this order was reinstated in 1814 ; but no 
knights have been created since 1830. "Chevalier" is the lowest rank 
in such an order; it is here erroneously used by De Quincey as a title 
of address. 

79 22 *' Chevalier, as-tu donne," etc. : ''Chevalier, have you fed the 
hog.^" "Ma fiUe," etc. : ** My daughter, have you," etc. "Pucelle," 
etc. : ** Maid of Orleans, have you saved the lilies (i.e. France) ? " 

79 28 If the man that turnips cries : Cf. Joh7iso7iia7iay ed. R. Napier, 
London, 1884, where, in Anecdotes of Johiison^ by Mrs. Piozzi, p. 29, is 
found : '* 'T is a mere play of words (added he) " — Johnson is speak- 
ing of certain " verses by Lopez de Vega " — " and you might as well 

say, that 

" If the man who turnips cries, 

Cry not when his father dies, 

'T is a proof that he had rather 

Have a turnip than his father." 

This reference is given in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations. 

80 4 The Oriflamme of France : the red banner of St. Denis, pre- 
served in the abbey of that name, near Paris, and borne before the 
French king as a consecrated flag. 

80 22 Twenty years after, talking with Southey : In 1816 De Quin- 
cey was a resident of Grasmere ; Southey lived for many years at 
Keswick, a few miles away; they met first in 1807. For De Quincey's 
estimate of Southey*s Joan of Arcy see Woi'ks, Riverside ed.. Vol. VI, 
pp. 262-266; Masson's ed.. Vol. V, pp. 238-242. 

80 28 Chinon is a little town near Tours. 

81 3 She "pricks" for sheriffs: The old custom was to prick with 
a pin the names of those chosen by the sovereign for sheriffs. 

82 9 Ampulla: the flask containing the sacred oil used at corona- 
tions. 

82 10 The English boy: Henry VI was nine months old when he 
was proclaimed king of England and France in 1422, Charles VI of 
France, and Henry V, his legal heir, having both died in that year. 
Henry's mother was the eldest daughter of Charles VI. 

82 13 Drawn from the ovens of Rheims : Rheims, where the kings of 
France were crowned, was famous for its biscuits and gingerbread. 



NOTES 119 

82 26 Tindal's " Christianity as Old as the Creation " : Matthew Tindal 
(1657-1732) published this work in 1732 ; its greatest interest lies in the 
fact that to this book more than to any other Butler's Analogy was a 
reply. Tindal's argument was that natural religion, as taught by the 
deists, was complete ; that no revelation was necessary. A life accord- 
ing to nature is all that the best religion can teach. Such doctrine as 
this Joan preached in the speech ascribed to her. 

82 27 A parte ante: "from the part gone before"; Joan's speech 
being three centuries earlier than the book from which it was taken. 

83 9 That divine passage in ** Paradise Regained" : from Book I, 
11. 196-205. 

84 34 Patay is near Orleans ; Troyes was the capital of the old 
province of Champagne. 

86 25 "Nolebat," etc. : "She would not use her sword or kill any 
one." 

87 24 Made prisoner by the Burgundians : The English have accused 
the French officers of conniving at Joan's capture through jealousy of 
her successes. Compiegne is fifty miles northeast of Paris. 

87 27 Bishop of Beauvais : Beauvais is forty-three miles northwest 
of Paris, in Normandy. This bishop, Pierre Cauchon, rector of the 
University at Paris, was devoted to the English party. 

87 30 ** Bishop that art," etc.: Cf. Shakespeare's Macbeth^ Act I, 
sc. V, 1. 13. 

87 33 A triple crown : The papacy is meant, of course. The pope's 
tiara is a tall cap of golden cloth, encircled by three coronets. 

88 17 Judges examining the prisoner: The judge in France ques- 
tions a prisoner minutely when he is first taken, before he is remanded 
for trial. De Quincey displays here his inveterate prejudice against the 
French ; but this practice is widely regarded as the vital error of French 
criminal procedure. 

89 5 A wretched Dominican : a member of the order of mendicant 
friars established in France by Domingo de Guzman in 1216. Their 
official name was Fratres Predicatores^ " Preaching Friars," and their 
chief objects were preaching and instruction. Their influence was very 
great until the rise of the Jesuit order in the sixteenth century. The 
Dominicans Le Maitre and Graverent (the Grand Inquisitor) both took 
part in the prosecution. 

89 31 For a less cause than martyrdom : Cf. Genesis ii. 24. 

91 14 From the four winds : There may be a reminiscence here of 
Ezekiel xxxvii. i-io, especially verse 9: " Come from the four winds, 
O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live." 



I20 SELECTIONS FROM BE QUINCE Y 

91 30 Luxor. See note 13 27. 

92 15 Daughter of Caesars : She was the daughter of the German 
emperor, Francis I, whose sovereignty, as the name *' Holy Roman 
Empire " shows, was supposed to continue that of the ancient Roman 
emperors. 

92 17 Charlotte Corday (1768-93) murdered the revolutionist Marat 
in the belief that the good of France required it ; two days later she 
paid the penalty, as she had expected, with her life. 

93 18 Grafton, a chronicler: Richard Grafton died about 1572. He 
was printer to Edward VI. His chronicle was published in 1569. 

93 20 ** Foule face " : Foule formerly meant " ugly." 

93 21 Holinshead : Raphael Holinshed died about 1580. His great 
work. Chronicles of England^ Scotland^ and Ireland^ was used by Shake- 
speare as the source of several plays. He writes of Joan : " Of favor 
[appearance] was she counted likesome ; of person stronglie made, and 
manlie ; of courage, great, hardie, and stout withall." 

94 (footnote) Satanic : This epithet was applied to the work of 
some of his contemporaries by Southey in the preface to his Vision of 
fudgementy 182 1. It has been generally assumed that Byron and Shelley 
are meant. See Introduction to Byron's Vision of fudgment in the new 
Murray edition of Byron, Vol. IV. 

96 (footnote) Burgoo : a thick oatmeal gruel or porridge used by sea- 
men. According to the New Eiiglish Dictionary the derivation is un- 
known; but in the Athenceum, Oct. 6, 1888, quoted by Hart, the word is 
explained as a corruption of Arabic burghiiL 

101 30 English Prince, Regent of France: John, Duke of Bedford, 
uncle of Henry VI. " In genius for war as in political capacity," says 
J. R. Green, ** John was hardly inferior to Henry [the Fifth, his brother] 
himself" {A History of the English People, Book IV, Chap. VI). 

101 31 My Lord of Winchester : Henry Beaufort, Bishop of Win- 
chester, half-brother of Henry IV. He was the most prominent Eng- 
lish prelate of his time and was the only Englishman in the Court that 
condemned Joan. As to the story of his death, to which De Quincey 
alludes, see Shakespeare, 2 Henry VI, Act III, sc. iii. Beaufort became 
cardinal in 1426. 

102 17 Who is this that cometh from Domremy? This is an evident 
imitation of the famous passage from Isaiah Ixiii. i : *' Who is this 
that cometh from Edom, with dyed garments from Bozrah ? " " Bloody 
coronation robes " is rather obscure, but probably refers to the fact 
that Joan had shed her own blood to bring about the coronation of 



NOTES 121 

her sovereign ; she is supposed to have appeared in armor at the actual 
coronation ceremony, and this armor might with reason be imagined as 
*♦ bloody." 

102 22 She . . . shall take my lord*s brief : that is, she shall act 
as the bishop's counsel. In the case of Beauvais, as in that of Win- 
chester, it must be remembered that in all monarchical countries the 
bishops are *' lords spiritual," on an equality with the greater secular 
nobles, the ** lords temporal." 



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